Haley's Book
by Contraltissimo
Summary: The journalings of a survivor shipwrecked in Deep Sky. All original cast, no game experience necessary. Please read and review!
1. Chapter 1

This is my first fan-fiction. Reviews are _very_ much appreciated. Enjoy!

**Rated T** - The following chapter contains passages which may be disturbing to younger or sensitive readers. Reader discretion is advised.  
**Warning:** This fan-fiction is a **tragedy**. I cannot guarantee a happy ending. Nor, unfortunately, can I guarantee a prompt second chapter.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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The date. I usually start with the date, but I'm not sure what day it is. I don't know if it's day-_time_. It's so dark here. It's late in the sardis-fishing season anyway. My hand hurts.

What am I doing? This isn't even my book. It's Haley's. That's his name on the front. Derek Haley. I found it in what was left of his bunk. Haley wouldn't mind, right? Haley is--he's--gone. Dead. Moons, I can't believe I'm writing this. The pirates killed him. Him and Captain Peralta. Now it's just five: First Mate Greys, our cook Mr. Porter, and then Dhalan and Shanda, and myself. Alex Reyes. But everybody just calls me Rey.

Shiver it I've written all this before! But it's gone, my journal is burned. And I curse the black pirates to the darkest circle of Deep Sky for destroying it! My whole blasted life! No, just the last few months anyway. I have other journals back home. Home? I shouldn't think about it. But I have other journals from before. But everything I've written of this voyage is lost. Just like us.

They shot us out of the sky. It was mine and Haley's shift. We were tying up some of the nets when we heard the _boom _of canon-fire, and then saw the pirates coming out of the clouds on the starboard side. The first volley blew off all the rudders on that side, and I heard one ball clunk into what must have been the engine. There was a big, metal crunching sound and we started lurching and wheeling to port. Captain Peralta ran out on deck with a pistol, and there was another _boom_.

I don't know what scared me more, the black pirates, or the Captain's face. He just looked scared, and I'd never seen the Captain look scared, and that made _me _scared. It was just for an instant, but I can still see his face in my mind. He knew he couldn't dodge it.

I can't do this. I'd never seen someone die before.

The ball hit him directly and blew him off the port side of the deck. I can't believe this. Why? We're just a fishing vessel! We have nothing! We're not merchants! Why us? Why us? Why? I can't. Why did this happen to us? Why black pirates, and why us? And now we're lost.

And I sit. And I can't do this.

But something I once heard makes me go on. "Writing about bad things is better than not writing about them." I wrote that down once before, in one of my other journals.

This is hard. The same round that killed the Captain totally killed our engine. Then I heard a third _boom_, and Haley yelled something at me, I don't know what. We were running for the cabin when the third shot hit. This one hit the mast. Shivered it completely. And I--no. I can't. Haley. I can't--why me? Haley, Moons above, Haley got in front of me. The mast shattered and he got in between me and the mast, and took all the splinters. I heard him kind of grunt and wince when the pieces hit him, and then he just...fell.

He was there on his back, and just cut up real bad. There were two big pieces stuck down the right side of his chest, and little pieces everywhere else. And he just looked at me. Like he didn't know what to do. Well _I _sure as the depths didn't know what to do. All I could do was just stare right back at him. I couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it. This morning he was alive and we were talking and joking. Was it only this morning? How long have I been awake? Does the sun touch this land? It was forever ago, it was a moment ago. And now he's dead and I'm still alive.

No, no, no, I kept telling myself. This can't be happening, this can't be real, and we just looked at each other. I heard a loud noise, and realized the mast had toppled over and smashed into the lifeboats before it fell off.

And then suddenly Greys was there, and he and I were dragging Haley back to the cabin. The world seemed to be getting hazier, disappearing. I realized it was because we were sinking down into the clouds. I've never been so scared in all my life.

We got below decks, and dumped Haley into the nearest bunk. It was Shanda's. He winced again and cried out, and held on tight to one of the pieces of wood in his chest.

Greys said gruffly, "See to him," and then left. I smelled smoke. It was coming from the engine. I could hear the clump of boots down the hall, and a lot of shouting, but the only thing in my head was _Haley's dying, Haley's dying..._

I didn't know what to do. I found an old blanket in a trunk in the corner, came back to the bunk and put my hand around the bigger of the two shivers.

Haley just said, "No..." and I could see tears in his eyes. He was afraid.

Moons, _I _was afraid. I was shaking so bad I almost couldn't breathe. And... I was crying, too. And I don't care who knows it, whoever reads this. I never should have--but, no. It's too late. Curse the black pirates. And curse me too. Curse us all.

I steeled myself and pulled the shiver out. Haley screamed and thrashed, and I tried to keep a wad of the blanket over the hole. I didn't want to go on, but I also didn't want to wait until he calmed down to do the other one. Just to go through all this again. So I grabbed the second one and pulled it out too. He cried through bared teeth and thrashed again, and I got splinters in my hand, and now it hurts to write.

I pulled out a few more of the smaller pieces and he cried out at each one. I was helping him, but I was hurting him. I couldn't stand it any longer. I wadded up the blanket over the two big wounds and just tried to keep a steady pressure.

It's hard to remember the next part. The world kept getting darker and darker, and the ship started shaking. Haley yelled and writhed at every lurch. And I was yelling just as loud as he was--I was terrified. I felt sick and I couldn't breathe right. I heard a wind outside like a tempest, and cracks of thunder so loud I thought it was the end of the world. Maybe it was. Maybe the Rains of Destruction came back. Moons, why us?

It was like that forever, cracking and shuddering and thundering, like an endless bad dream, and then there were a few seconds of silence. I opened my eyes long enough to see that the front of my shirt was soaked in Haley's blood from pressing on the blanket. And then we crashed.

I don't know what happened, the whole world turned upside-down. Things flew everywhere, Haley fell out of the bunk, and I heard Porter swear. Haley and I sprawled off the floor and onto the wall, and then back up against the floor. The ship was sideways. Trunks and loose drawers and boxes fell all around us, and I tried to shelter Haley with my body. Like he did for me. Moons forgive me.

There was a _slunching _kind of sound, a very quick slow-down, and everything stopped. We bumped into the wall again. Or rather, the floor. The bulkheads groaned and settled, and for a while I thought the ship would break apart. But it didn't.

We were grounded, I could tell that much. Everything was quiet, eerie. Dark as the depths. But I was glad we'd stopped tumbling and spinning. Haley was still curled on his side under the roof I made of my torso. I found the blanket again, and came back and pressed on the wounds. Haley didn't respond much this time, and that scared me worse than when he screamed.

This can't happen, this can't happen, was all I was thinking. I wanted Captain Peralta--he could help. But no, he was dead. I was so scared. I called Haley's name a couple of times, but nothing happened. Then I shook him, and his eyes snapped open and he said, "Rey," and looked at me very clearly. It didn't feel real. He grabbed my arm very tightly and said, "Give it to her for me."

And then I heard voices and scuffling from the hallway--which was above my head. I looked up and saw dim smoke coiling along the walls.

I felt Haley let go of my arm and I didn't want to look back down. It was as if every part of me knew what I would find, but I still didn't want to see it. So I just shut my eyes and slumped my weight down on the wounds, even though it didn't matter anymore.

Dhalan was the first to find us. Light came down from above, and I looked up, and he was there holding a lantern. He dropped down through the door and told me Shanda was with Greys. He spoke like one winded with fatigue. Greys was keeping Shanda busy elsewhere so she wouldn't have to see Haley like this. At least, not right away.

Greys had known.

I felt so useless. I was sobbing by that point, or I thought I was. I felt like I couldn't breathe, like every breath was a burden. It felt like... I can't describe it. Strange. It still feels that way, but I've gotten used to it. The air is very strange here.

Maybe my labored breathing led to sobbing anyway. I didn't know what to do. And as it turned out, Greys couldn't keep Shanda away for very long anyway. And there were more scuffled boots and arguing voices, and then she came, and she saw Haley, and just screamed.

The rest was madness until Greys got everyone to shut up. I've written before about how he can take up a whole room just by walking in. But my journal is gone. I wish this hadn't happened.

Greys set us to organizing our supplies. The engine room was in as much order as it would ever be, which was not much, so we're leaving that alone for now. He sent me to salvage mine and Haley's room, and Dhalan to help in the galley with Porter, while he went to clean up his own quarters and the storage rooms. He couldn't get Shanda to do anything. Or he just _didn't_ get her to do anything. I couldn't tell. If he really wanted to, I'm sure, but--there was kind of an unspoken agreement to just let her be. She's still in there with Haley. I can still hear her crying.

Before we went to work, Greys, Dhalan and me went topside--which was difficult, since it was sideways--to see where in the blazes we landed. When we looked outside, all we saw was darkness in every direction. We were stuck in the mud on an inclined surface, and the skies above were black with running clouds. The air stank, and it was kind of cold, so we came back inside.

I didn't see any of the Moons.

Is this...the Underworld? Are we dead? No. Haley's dead, but we're still alive. Where are we? Has anyone been here before?

I can't think about this.

We came back inside and lit some lanterns, and I went to mine and Haley's room to see what I could find. Our room was closer to the engine. I've written this before. It's a little bit noisy, but we got used to it. No, it _was _a little bit noisy. Anyway, that's how my journal burned. Along with a lot of the rest of my stuff. The engine caught fire and my bunk was just next-door. Shivers.

"Shivers." I used to say that a lot whenever I was mad, but now it feels strange. "Shivers." "Shivers." Haley got shivered. Moons forgive me.

It was the first thing I looked for. I rooted around, but I only found the metal parts of the binding, and the buckle, and some scraggly pieces of burnt leather. The pages were gone. Ashes. Ashes, ashes, ashes. I could have cried. I _did _cry. I'm crying just thinking about it. I wrote so much. So much recorded. So much lost. I can't believe this.

I stripped the bunks and folded the linens, stacked some boxes--what does it all matter? And then I found this book in Haley's bunk. I yearned for my journal. For something. This didn't have anything in it. Was Haley filling up his own book, with this one being the next one he was going to use? But he can't use it now. Would he mind? No, he'd want me to put it to good use. It's a good book. Thank you Haley. Derek. Was this supposed to happen? That you had a spare book because mine would be burned?

I don't know what's happened to us. Did fate put us here?

So I sat down with Haley's book, and the log-lust took me, so I wrote. Dhalan looked in a couple of times, but he didn't say anything. And now I've written, and I'm very tired, and my hand still hurts.

Everything's quiet. What are they all doing? I can only hear Shanda still crying, still moaning. I've written before what a pretty voice she has for singing. And now hearing this...it makes me sad. I'm tired. Shall I make it my lullaby? _Moons_...

Dhalan and Shanda are brother and sister, by the way. And they are Nasrean. I've written this before.

I'm so tired.


	2. Chapter 2

Many thanks to MartiOwlsten for proof-reading, reviews and support!  
This one's a little bit shorter.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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I've slept twice since my last entry. I don't know for how long, and the skies above always look the same anyway so I can't tell the time. So what do I call this? My third waking? I feel like I need something to measure by.

Third Waking.

Yesterday--no, last waking we buried Haley.

Outside the ship is just mud. It's a mountain of mud. The keel is facing downhill. The ship is on its starboard side, and the port is to the skies. We spent all yesterday--this is going to take some getting used to--we spent all of _last waking_ salvaging everything we could, and prying out some planks from parts of the ship we could spare them from, to make a sort of platform outside, uphill from the ship. The ground is too muddy to walk on.

Is this an island below the clouds? Is it even an island? It seems to go forever in all directions. But then it's too dark to really tell. Is it a new continent? I'm trying to think. Where were we? We were many leagues west-southwest of Isla de Faro. I've heard that in Valua the skies are always dark. But Valua is so far to the north, there's no way we could have drifted that far. And Nasr is just as far away.

We can't have drifted very far, laterally. This has to still be the middle of Mid-Ocean. Only small islands out here. So where are we?

We're below the clouds, that's where.

I'm distracting myself. I wanted to write about Haley.

We had to build a platform, and then we laid a long line of planks a little way out, in the direction the prow is facing. It's strange. When you bury your dead, why do you do it at a distance? This ground is so horrible. It would have been easier to bury him closer, now that I think about it. But imagining so close a grave makes me...uneasy, somehow. Strange.

At the end of the plank-line, we used some of the railing posts (they had a good shape for it) to dig as much of a depression in the ground as we could. It was shallow, but it served. And I guess digging in mud is easier than digging in hard dirt. We laid Haley in the ground and Greys said a few words. What a great sailor he had been. How much he'd be missed. Those things upper crewmen are supposed to say. There really aren't any words that are sufficient though. The only words that would come close to being sufficient would be...a journal's worth.

Moons I miss my journal.

But at least I have this.

Now, there was something that I've been hesitant to put down, because Haley told me never to tell anybody about it. I try to make it a habit not to write things that are none of my business, if I can help it. But I guess it just _became_ my business. The thing that Haley told me to "give to her" has to go to Shanda. It's a ring. It took me forever to find it in our quarters. At least it was still in its little box.

But I can't do it right now. Shanda won't talk to anybody but Dhalan at the moment. Early this waking when I came out I saw them both already up, outside and sitting near the tip of the prow, with their legs hanging over the deck. I don't know if either of them had slept. I'll get it to her eventually.

Meanwhile, we've been trying to see what we can do about the engine. The only one who knows anything about ship engines is Greys. He and Dhalan and I have been dismantling it, and bringing the bigger parts out here to the platform. That's where I am now. This...big bendy-looking piece was the last one Greys said he needed out of the way, so I dragged it out and...got distracted.

That's the downside to keeping a journal, if it can be called a downside; it's that the log-lust can take you at any time, no matter what you're doing. But fortunately, they haven't called for me back yet. Even so, I guess I should see if they still need my help...

Okay, they don't. All they needed was another piece taken out of the way. Besides, there's barely enough room in there for just the two of them. Our ship is big, but not that big. It is called the _Zephyrus_, after all. I've written that before.

On the way back out here, I checked on Porter. He's been a little distant ever since we crashed. I've written before about how talkative he is, or was. But now he's so quiet. And he doesn't come out of the galley very often. Greys says it's best to keep a positive mindset, and Porter almost seems to be doing all right. Almost. But, I don't know if he's really handling it very well.

Shivers, are _any_ of us handling it very well? Shanda's still in shock about Haley (and still there on the prow), Dhalan is tied up just getting his sister to remember to eat, Porter stops talking and Greys... Greys... Greys seems... the same, almost. His face is a little harder. With Captain Peralta dead, everything falls to him now. Could I ever do that? Hold myself together when everything else falls apart? I wonder what's in his head. Does he wish he could just break down and cry? People look to their leaders for comfort and surety. Who do the leaders look to?

But anyway, Porter says he's fine. And he still makes the meals. From a sideways galley. That's one good thing: the main hold of the ship is positively laden with sardis. This _is_ a fishing vessel. So at least we'll have food for a good while. But still, the way Porter looked at me when I went in there... I don't know.

I'm looking at the mountain we're grounded on. The peak of it goes up into the clouds, from what I can tell. It's still very hazy and hard to make out. We're thinking of scouting up the slope, to see if it leads anywhere, or if we can get a little higher and maybe catch someone's attention. It's something to hope for, but with all this mud, I don't know how we could do it, or how long it would take...

Greys said think positive. Positive...positive... We have plenty of food and water, none of the five of us are injured. ...I know. My splinters are gone. That's positive.


	3. Chapter 3

Sorry for the long delay; I have many mad schemes I'm working on with my co-conspirator, and they take time...  
Many thanks to my reviewers! You win the whole parade.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Seventh Waking.

We're on the mountain. It's me, Dhalan, and Greys.

Dhalan said something to me shortly after I ended my last entry. He said I should "get my nose outta my book and start helping". I realized how everyone else had been reacting to our situation, but I didn't think about myself. I guess I have been a little reclusive. Why am I so drawn to pen and paper? I don't know. Maybe it's just something to hide behind. An outlet? A comfort? Maybe it's what keeps me sane.

We've been looking a lot at the engine these past few wakings. We've found what pieces are damaged and we've been trying to repair them. All it is to me is a bunch of twisted metal that needs to be bent back into shape. But I'm learning a lot from Greys. He's shown me and Dhalan how the moonstone-chamber works and where the energy goes... I still don't understand it all the way, but I think I'm getting it. Greys said we were lucky that the chamber didn't rupture.

But honestly, I'm wondering whether it's really fixable. I'm not an engineer, but it all just looks so terrible. The damage, I mean. It makes me wonder whether the _Zephyrus_ will ever really fly again.

Think positive, think positive. I guess we'll find out if it'll fly when and if we can get all the pieces back together.

So. Since the engine is in such questionable shape, we decided we'd better scout up the mountain. We all want to get out of here, and back to civilization, and we're going to search every possible avenue until we find one that works. Maybe this mountain leads up and connects with an island or a reef or something. I don't know what we'd do from there, but...

Ah, and I'm getting visions of rock-climbing in open sky, rock-to-rock through a stone-reef until we reach a landmass. Could you sleep on a reef-rock? Don't they pitch and roll, so you'd fall off if you didn't keep moving? Do reef-rocks collide with each other? Very often, anyway? Wouldn't want to wake up to that. Pinched between two small islands.

Maybe if you could find one with a little nook in it, and then somehow lash yourself inside, so you wouldn't fall out if it rolled, and so you'd be protected if there were a collision. Could you sleep doing that? Rolling around inside rope and rock? Maybe if you were tired enough. Maybe you could sail the world inside a rock. Madness...where would you put the privies? And worse! If it turned upside-down!

I get ahead of myself too easily. So far it's just a lot of mud. This mountain is a lot bigger than it looks. Not that it's easy to actually _see_ how big it looks, in the darkness. It's like the horizon comes closer just to tease you. And then you go forward and the horizon leaps ahead, just out of reach. It's all shadows. I can see the great mass of it, barely against the clouds, there. But it always seems closer than it is.

At first we tried a plank-line thing again, to go up the mountain, and it didn't work so great. Well it worked fine, it was just time-consuming and difficult, and you have to pick up the planks behind you, and hand them forward to lay down in front. So we tried that, and it was really slow--and then Shanda has this wonderful idea. (She's been doing a little better.) What we did is we each took two of the railing posts, and lashed them one to a foot.

The railing posts are good for everything all of a sudden. They're wide and shovelly, and you can also wear them like sleds on your feet.

All at once it makes me glad of our low-class fishing vessel. I've seen bigger, richer ships that have round railing posts. But ours are flat. They're perfect.

So you lash the post under your boot, with the rope over your toes, and then over your ankle and back behind. And it helps if you can thread the rope through any buckles you have. Dhalan's shoes were a little trickier to get to work. Nasrean style and all.

When you have them on your feet, you take a couple more ells of rope and lash the front ends of the posts together. You hold this like a kind of double-leash on your sleds, and you can pull it up if one of your leading edges gets stuck. And it also helps to sort of pull your feet forward. It keeps the fronts above the mud, anyway.

It's a lot easier than hauling planks with us, that's for sure.

It's funny. We've been doing something that Dhalan calls "switchbacking". Going straight up the mountain would take too much energy too fast. So we go mostly sideways, but with an upward angle, and then we _switch back_ and go the other way. It's a zig-zag. He said Nasrean caravans have to do that sometimes in certain places along their trade-routes.

But it made me laugh, and I consider that very precious right now. I thought it was funny because it sounded like someone trying (and failing) to say "swashbuckling". Switchbacking, swashbuckling... Tremble before the great switchbacking pirate, Daccat!

...And I remind myself that I hate pirates.

We're moving.

That was something like an hour ago. Maybe more. I think we're as high up as we're going to get today--this waking. In a little bit we'll turn around and go back down. We can't even see the ship anymore. Just the trail we've left behind us. A few rests ago (I've been writing this in between stretches of hiking), we could barely see the glow from the lanterns we left hanging outside the ship. It was more of a dirty-gold haze. The air is so strange and thick here. Now we can't see any sign of the ship at all. It's too cloudy.

That eternal question... What lies below the clouds?

More clouds.

And our ship.

And what's on this mountain? Mud. And also our ship. And us. I think if we ever plan to get to the top of this mountain, wherever it is, we'll have to leave the ship behind. For a few wakings, anyway. But for now we're not going to extend that far. Besides, we didn't even bring anything to sleep on.

It suddenly frightens me, thinking about sleeping on this slope. Under the dark sky. No moonlight. Not even starlight. Will we ever have to sleep out here? Counting the things to keep you company... The ground, the air, and the horizon. Three.

I've been out in open sky before. Where you look out, and there's just nothing. No islands, no reefs. Just your ship, clouds below, and Moons above. Well I guess that's something. The Moons. And the stars. And your ship for that matter. But I mean when there's nothing else in the open sky. Just...open sky.

I used to think I could call that "nothing".

But this is worse. There really is _nothing_ down here. The skies are eternally dark, and the land is the same in every direction. Does it bother Dhalan and Shanda that much? Aren't there some places in Nasr where the desert stretches for leagues and leagues all around? But at least in Nasr they can still see the Moons and stars and clouds, and blessed daylight.

It's like being an insect, lost in the space between two enormous overlapping blankets. Mud below, darkness above, and that's it. Forever. Limbo.

No, I want to sleep in the ship tonight--this...sleeping? Wakings and sleepings, days and nights, does it make a difference?

When we get back, I want to sleep in the ship.

Maybe I'll give Haley's ring to Shanda before I do. I think she'll be okay.


	4. Chapter 4

Reviewers, you are awesome. All my thanks are belong to you.

**Note:** The grammatical error in paragraph five is intentional.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Eighth Waking.

Well I didn't give Shanda the ring. Stuff happened yester-waking, and Porter is being very scary.

Shanda found a fish. At least, we think it's a fish. She caught a fish and killed it while we were out climbing all over the mountain.

There are fish down here! Fish! No sardis, but some kind of fish, anyway! And if there are fish, then maybe, if we need to, we can hold out longer than we thought.

But that's what Porter is worried about. The fish, I mean. When Greys and Dhalan and me got back to the ship, we found Porter and Shanda arguing in the galley--and Dhalan told me that was a sure sign that she was feeling better: she was well enough to argue.

She and Porter were in the galley, and Porter had this stance in front of all his cookware like he was protecting it. Shanda was holding the dead fish. Now, I usually try to avoid being judgmental. I really do. But this fish, this _thing_...was _ugly_. My first thought when I saw it was something like "Moons, what unholy creature gave _birth_ to that thing?"

It was grey-brown, just about the same color as the mud, and almost as long as my arm. Its shape was just...odd. It had no dorsal, anal or caudal fins. There was the hint of something ridge-like along the spine near the tip of its tail, but that was it. Actually, it didn't really have pectoral fins either. Instead it had these sort of trailing side-flaps that were more like extensions of its body than they were like fins. It also had four feathery sort of feelers or lures or something above its eyes. I've written before how Porter used to rant about all the kinds of fish he cooked. He told me about some that hunt with lures. So is it a carnivore? It had the teeth for it. And its mouth, its jaws...were just strange. They opened sideways. Like an insect.

When you think of a fish, you think vertical-flat. This thing was horizontal-flat. Like something that got squished.

Anyway, Shanda wanted Porter to stew it up for when the three of us got back. But Porter didn't want to have anything to do with it, and he was going on and on about diseases and worms and poisoned flesh. That was about when we came in, and Greys did that thing where he angles his chin a certain way, and glares, and the whole room shuts up.

The way it happened was like this: While we were on the mountain, Shanda just decided to take a walk or something in the sled-shoes. She _did_ have the idea for them. She had gone over to the post that marked Haley's grave, and then gone a little bit downhill. At some point, she took a step, and something in the mud started wriggling underneath her left sled. She said it scared her so bad she almost fell over backwards, and then that the thought of falling in the mud was equally repulsive, so she just calmed down and thought for a minute.

There was a thing under her sled, and she didn't know what it was. (Come to think of it, that would scare me too.) Anyway, she only knew that it was small enough that her stepping on it was keeping it stuck in the mud. So she took off her right sled, and used it to whack the thing hard, whatever it was. It stopped wriggling, and she used the sled to pry it out of the mud, and she got this ugly fish-thing. It wasn't completely dead, so she whacked it a couple more times before she brought it back to the platform outside the ship. (No nets, no line, no hook, and she's still the best angler.)

We keep a little rag there on the corner of the platform, to wipe the mud off our sleds. She used it to get the mud off the fish-thing, and her hands, and then she got the crazy idea to ask Porter to cook it. He didn't want to, and they started arguing, and that's how we found them when we came back from the mountain.

I admit, it did look pretty disgusting. Not something I would jump at eating. But Greys just took everything in stride, and asked Porter what his objections were to stewing up Shanda's freshly-caught fish-thing.

Porter said something like, "I won't be sullying my pots and serving up our deaths with that dirty, plague-ridden mud-worm!"

And then Greys calmly inspected the fish-thing and said, "What is it?"

And Shanda replied, "It's _not sardis_." And by the tone of her voice, everybody could almost hear the implied "..._which we've been eating forever, and which we're all tired of_."

It's true. Our biscuits ran out a fair while ago, and it's just been sardis, sardis, sardis. Don't get me wrong--I'm glad for the food we have. But something different now and then is good. I think. Maybe.

Something different.

We had been out to sky for a long time before we were shot down. I don't know how many days eight wakings comes to, but I think we're past the point where we would have put back in to port to restock our supplies. Fruit, biscuits, small moonstones, twine for the nets. Water.

Does it rain down here?

But we've still got some of that.

So all we have to eat is sardis. And they are getting old. In more ways than one. Maybe Porter can find a way to preserve the meat or make jerky of it all or something. I don't know.

Anyway, "It's not sardis" was good enough for us. It was something different, and something fresh besides. Greys told Porter to go ahead and figure out a way to cook it, just in case we had to live on these things later, but Porter wouldn't do it. Shanda volunteered, but Porter wouldn't let her do it either. He only just barely, begrudgingly let Greys get at his cookware to do it.

Everyone respects Greys. Greys is careful and respectful in everything he does. Which is the reason and which is the result? I don't know. Anyway, Greys cooked the ugly fish-thing.

Porter wouldn't have it. He locked himself in his quarters and didn't come out the rest of the waking. On his way there he kept going on about poison and females and bad luck. Shanda glared after him. It was a low blow. I'd heard that superstition too: that it's bad luck to have a female on board. I'd almost believed it until I met Shanda. I wish I could recall how I first wrote about her, in my other journal. It was perfect. Worth trying to repeat:

Luck has nothing to do with Shanda--she does her fair share of the work, just like the rest of us. She's very strong, and she definitely pulls her own weight, maybe more. She and Dhalan always get a bigger catch than Haley and me. Maybe they work together better because they're brother and sister.

I can't remember very much. It was such a good entry.

Yes, I'm vain, I'm proud; I fancy myself eloquent when I write. My journal is very important to me. I always want it to be the best.

Ugly fish-thing. Right. Greys did it all. Normally nobody really cares when the cook is preparing food. People only start caring when the food is ready to eat. But we all watched while Greys gutted it and carved it and chopped up the meat. It seemed so easy to him. I didn't know he was so good with the prongs and carving-knife. Has he always been a good cook? Or maybe what held our interest was the ugly fish-thing. We see common fish every day--or we used to--but _this_ thing? I don't know why we were all so transfixed; he cut it up just like any other fish, and threw the pieces in a pot to stew.

So it cooked, and then it was ready, and Greys served it up. But nobody ate right away--the four of us just sat around the makeshift table in the galley (it's a little tighter now, since what was the wall-space is now the floor-space), and stared at our stew. Then eventually everybody started looking at Shanda until she took the first bite.

We couldn't really tell from her face what she thought. Well _I_ couldn't. But after she took her second bite everybody else started. What, were we scared like she's instantly going to die if she has one bite? I don't know.

Well, ugly fish-thing tastes like...fish. It's not that bad. It's not that good either. The texture was very strange.

Who cares. It's food.

And we're all feeling fine this waking. All except Porter. I think he thinks we're all going to catch a plague and die. Including him. He still spends most of his time alone in the galley. Last time I checked he was still scrubbing out the pot Greys had used to cook the fish-thing. He snapped at me when I lingered to look in. Is he losing it?

It's hard. Greys said think positive. But I wish Porter wouldn't talk about all of us dying all the time.

I've just got to keep thinking positive. We can survive this, we can survive this. I wrote in one of my other journals something I once heard: "Writing something down gives it power." Ah, maybe I remember it because I wrote it down, and that gave it enough power to be memorable.

We can survive. We can survive.


	5. Chapter 5

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Ninth Waking.

I've finally given the ring to Shanda, and all of a sudden I'm disgusted with myself.

Even though she's been doing a little better lately, I still find her up on the prow at the beginning of every waking. Maybe her wakings are out of sync with everybody else's? I don't know.

Dhalan wasn't with her this time. So I went up and sat next to her.

I'm no good at talking to people. I didn't know what to say. I tried so hard to think of something nice to say, something comforting. But everything I thought of seemed just as able to be interpreted badly. So I just said, "Haley told me to give you something."

And then she just looked at me. After a second I realized she wasn't going to say anything. And I couldn't think of anything to say either. So I took the box from my pocket, and just...gave it to her.

She took it in her hand, and just looked at it. It made me anxious how quiet it was. But then I thought, _Maybe she's just as anxious as I am. Maybe she has no idea what to do or say either_. What could have been in her head? She probably knew what it was. Nice little boxes like that usually only contain wedding rings or compasses.

Then she looked at me again. It was some kind of look that needed a response. But _I_ didn't know what it meant! I just remember her eyes. It could've been a thousand things. Rey, where did this come from? Rey, you're just lying to make me feel better. Rey, should I open it? Rey, you heartless, you give this to me _now?_ A million things at once.

I am not fluent in Face! Females! Why do they insist on communicating everything in code! Just looks and tilts and faces and knittings of the brow. Why?

And I laugh: I have an old, faded blue notebook at home. My friend Ricardo and I once tried to decipher the "girl-language", and I wrote down our research in that notebook. (Our "research" consisted mostly of spying on my sister and her friends.) That journal has some funny things in it. I wonder what Ricardo is doing right now. I haven't seen him in years. His parents had to move to Valua, I don't remember why.

I am too distractible.

I didn't know what to say to Shanda. Actually I didn't want to say anything. As unnerving as the silence was, it seemed like speaking out loud would make it worse. So I tried to make my face say, "Shanda, you can open it."

I don't know if she understood me or not, but she opened it anyway. When she saw the ring, her lips finally parted, but she still didn't say anything. I don't know how long we both sat there, her looking at the ring, me just...sitting there. She was breathing like she could have burst into tears at any moment. It felt so precarious I didn't want to move.

Then finally she said, "This is from Derek." Then she _did_ burst into tears.

I couldn't tell if it was a question or a statement--her voice was too tight. I tried putting a hand on her shoulder, hoping it would calm her down. But instead she cried harder. Then she put her arms around me and cried right into my shoulder.

I didn't expect this. I didn't expect _any_ of this. First I panicked. I didn't know what to do. Shanda was crying into my shoulder. Why? Because her might-have-been-fiancée is dead. Well how would _I_ feel? _I_ don't know, I'm not a girl! But that's stupid--that wouldn't matter--then how would Haley feel if Shanda had died? I've still got a heart to feel with, haven't I? And hers was breaking. Hers was already broken.

Shivers, I sound like a clichéd love-ballad.

After I thought that, it wouldn't leave my mind. _She's broken, she's broken_. It was pitiful, and it was breaking _me_. Then I thought of Dhalan. Did she cry into Dhalan's shoulder early every waking? Did it break _him?_ She _is_ his sister.

I felt...as if I were...I don't know...weaker and stronger at the same time. Weaker, because I'm no better than Haley. Why in the world would she latch onto _me_, cry into _my_ shoulder? I'm not for her. I have nothing. And stronger...because she chose my shoulder anyway. There was nobody else there to choose from, of course. But even so, she chose it over nothing. Like I was needed. Like I could help. I hugged her back.

And in some strange way, I liked it.

And then some voice in the back of my head whispered accusations of betrayal to Haley, of going behind his back, of stealing his girl... And something uglier said _So what! He's dead!_ And something nobler cursed me for the thought, _How dare I?_ it said, _How dare I even think it!_ And I cursed myself to the darkest depths of deep sky. Well here I am already. Is that justification enough? Moons, what the blazes is wrong with me?

All these thoughts ran through my head in what couldn't have been more than a few seconds. And then Dhalan came out. He looked a little bleary in the eyes. I think he came because he heard Shanda crying. He just said, "Shanda?"

And she answered, "I'm okay, Dhalan." And Dhalan went back inside.

After that she didn't cry so much. Just a few more nuzzled whimpers into my shoulder--it made me feel strangely important...more able--and then she pulled back. I wished so hard at that moment that I could just fix the world, fix everything, bring back Haley and Captain Peralta. I don't know how. I don't know why.

She sat back and just wiped her eyes and said, "I'm sorry."

I automatically said, "It's all right." Was that the best I could do? But it sounded wrong, or stolen. Haley is supposed to say things like that to her. Not me.

But Haley's not here anymore. But Shanda needed somebody to say that to her. I can do that, can't I? Aren't I allowed to be her friend? Wouldn't Haley want me to be her friend? But wouldn't that be as if I were trying to replace him? But I already _am_ her friend! ...Just not her would-be-fiancée.

I had been happy for Haley. And he knew it. He trusted me, confided in me about the ring, asked me for advice. (As if I were one to give sound advice on women.) I helped him to steel himself to even talk to her at first. I was kept awake by his lamplight when he was too flustered to sleep and could only sketch her face and write poetry. But I didn't mind. I was happy for him. I was rooting for him. I really was. The last thing I wanted was to get in the way, to get in between. I never wanted to take Shanda from him. So can't I be a friend only? Or is that still like getting in between? Like stealing the place where Haley wanted to be?

But Shanda _needs_ a friend. She needs all the friends she can get. And Dhalan needs some sleep. I can be her friend. Can't I?

And steal everything that should have been for Haley. I disgust myself. I feel like something's wrong with me.

Well she hugged me first.

I don't want to write about this anymore. We're about to go look for more of those ugly fish-things. The sardis are getting rancid. They're beyond rancid, and Porter can't see it. We have no way to preserve the meat, and we're throwing them out. Or maybe we can use them as bait for the ugly fish-things. I'll ask Greys.

Our water is almost gone.


	6. Chapter 6

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**Rated T:** The following chapter contains passages which may be disturbing to younger or sensitive readers. Reader discretion is advised.  
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Thirteenth Waking.

I feel gross. My stomach hurts. Maybe writing will distract me.

Our water is gone. The sardis are gone too. Both long gone.

It's not so hard to find the ugly fish-things anymore. You just have to look carefully. They usually have their head-lures above the surface of the mud. And you walk up and keep your sleds on either side, and then skewer them. They're pretty big. We can go on maybe two of those a waking. For the meat, anyway. But we have to look further and further away each time we get them.

Something happier, something positive... Anything? I know. Shanda's voice came back to her. I've heard her humming and thrumming as she goes about.

When we would head for port after a long time out at sky, and the nights would get long, she would sing. She has such a pretty voice. I've written that before.

"_I've written that before._""_I've written that before!_" Is that my favorite thing to say?

I am sorry.

And I think: Sorry to who? You? Who are you?

Who will read this? I think there has been an unspoken giving-up on fixing the engine. We just don't have the tools.

So will anyone...?

Are we going to get out of here? I want to. I want to get out and up and back into the sky. Out of the mud and above the clouds. I want to live, and have children and grandchildren who will read this book, and know that there is always hope, for I will have proved it by my having escaped the darkness.

I sound strange to myself.

I need to focus. Why am I writing? For distraction? What happened to the log-lust? Maybe this is the log-lust and I'm just pretending it's not. Maybe I'm just going crazy. I need something to write about. Something to tell. That's what journals are for, aren't they? To tell the journaler's story? Is that where _history_ came from? Was it _his-story?_ Whoever he was, that wrote it down?

I do not feel well. Not well at all. I can feel my heartbeat in my eyes.

A few wakings ago, Greys brought an ugly fish-thing into the galley. (Porter mostly stays out of the galley now, and just stays in his quarters.) Greys wiped a spot clean on the thing's underbelly, and then nicked into it with a knife. It started bleeding profusely. Greys held it up until it all bled out into a bowl. Fish-blood. No. _Ugly fish-thing_-blood.

Then he told us we might have to live on it. Because our water was as good as gone. "It's fluid," he said, "It's not as good as water, but it's fluid." And he went on about how it might sustain us.

Nobody liked the idea. I...protested quite openly about it. I wish I hadn't. And then Greys seemed on edge. And he picked up the bowl, right to his lips, closed his eyes and swilled it for about a third of its contents. That was disgusting. I don't know what he thought of it, I couldn't tell, but I don't care. It was just disgusting. Then he said, "If I die, you'll know it's bad." And he went away to his quarters. He seemed almost...angry.

What are we to him? Us three young fisher-sailors? Brats that need constant minding? He was right. I knew it, somewhere deep inside, in a horrible place where all the logic is cruel: we could survive by drinking blood. Greys is always looking out for us. Why can't I be more grateful to him? What, because the way he saves our lives tastes like something scraped off the keel? I was so ashamed of myself. I'm still so ashamed of myself. I need to apologize to him.

Because he _was_ right. There was no more water. And no more water means death. But now we drink the blood of ugly fish-things. And it saves our lives. And it makes my stomach hurt.

It's one of those desperate measures that you are always aware of in the back of your mind, but then when it's upon you, you're surprised. Why is that? I don't know.

Well, it was upon us. And I knew we needed to show Greys a little faith. Dhalan took the liberty to acknowledge the fact out loud, and the way he said it annoyed me horribly. "He's right," he said, and started ladling everyone bowls of fish-blood. All perfect and knowing about it, as if nobody else besides him got the gist from Greys, the self-righteous... What am I saying? What's wrong with me? Moons, I hurt...

Did I sleep? No, I just laid here until it went away. And I heard Shanda singing.

And a wild thought: I'm dead. And it's the voice of my mother, coming to take me away. No. I pinch my arm, and it still hurts. I'm awake. I'm alive. The voice is from Shanda.

I'm okay, it's not so bad. I can handle this, I can handle this. It's just fish-blood. I can drink fish-blood. It tastes like creeping evil, and swallowing it makes me feel like my eyes are going to pop out of my head, but it's good for me, it's good for me, it will keep me alive. I've been consuming it for days--for _wakings_. Why can't my body just take it? Why doesn't it seem to bother Dhalan and Shanda as much? Cursed Nasreans! What intolerable foods can they have _possibly_ been subjected to in that sand-blasted country, that they may easily subsist on the lifeblood of dirty, plague-ridden mud-worms, and yet remain in good health! I am envious. In some twisted way, I am envious something terrible.

Ah, and I hear the middle-part of that song, that is the most beautiful. And everything vanishes. Shanda does that. I've written this before: She says she does it to while away the time, or just absentmindedly. But it is still so lovely. She should be performing for emperors and kings, not fishing for sardis. Then she would not have ended up here.

And she would never have met Derek Haley. She wouldn't want that.

This song... I have not heard her sing this tune in a long, long time. It makes me feel...peaceful. Like everything's going to be all right.

Thunder?

Did I really think it was thunder? That must have been hours ago. I was so hoping for rain. But there is none.

The ugly fish-things that we've been eating, and drinking blood from...are babies. And we have seen the unholy creature that gave birth to them. Holy Moons above, it was a monster, a demon, something evil, and it almost ate Dhalan, and I hope never to see it again.

But Dhalan's okay. Just a little muddy. Well, very muddy. He's outside, half-naked, scraping the mud off his clothes. We can't wash them, so Dhalan figures to just hang them to dry, and then beat them out once the mud hardens. I don't know how fast that will happen though. It's so muggy here.

Now I'm going to try to put together everything Dhalan told us with everything I saw for myself, chronologically.

Dhalan was looking for ugly fish-things far downslope of the ship. What he said happened was that he thought he found one, and that he could get it, real easy, just like that. But when he thrust in his skewer, a bigger part of the ground seemed to lurch in protest, bigger than usual.

So he took his cutlass--if my other journal hadn't burned, you'd know from what I've written before that Dhalan always carries a cutlass--Dhalan took his cutlass and stabbed it down along with the skewer, thinking it was just a bigger-than-normal ugly fish-thing. And then he realized he was on the back of something _very_ big, some animal that was coming up out of the mud. So he pulled out the skewer and cutlass and jumped off and landed in the mud.

Then he told us what the thing looked like. He said it looked almost exactly like the ugly fish-things, but bigger, _much_ bigger--the size of an arcwhale, he said. And the two front lures on its head were bigger too, and they glowed in the dark. And the sideways jaws were proportionally bigger, and so were the teeth on the inward ends.

So Dhalan was stuck in the mud, and there was a monster ugly fish-thing above him. He said it stooped down to eat him, but he jabbed his skewer and cutlass toward it. From what I understand, when the skewer connected, the monster sort of veered upward and a little sideways in its dive, so when it plunged into the mud, it barely missed Dhalan. But the impact of the monster onto his skewer drove Dhalan deeper into the mud too, and he said he barely remembered to let go before he was pulled down completely.

So the skewer was gone, but he still had his cutlass, and he slashed at the monster's underbelly as it slid past him into the mud. And then he said the ground started to move again. I didn't quite understand this part. He said it felt as if he were being sucked downward, and then moving sideways, or something, and then the ground fell, and an even _bigger_ monster ugly fish-thing came out of the mud. It was a _giant_ ugly fish-thing.

My hand is getting tired. I'm going to call them the monster and the giant.

So the monster pulled up out of the mud, and the giant came out of the ground and saw the monster. Dhalan decided to lie still and wait, thinking his muddied clothes would hide him. This turned out to be a wise decision. Then Dhalan said the giant did something...strange. He said it looked like magic. I don't know what magic looks like. Well actually I did see Captain Peralta make a healing spell once, and that made a green glow. But Dhalan said the giant seemed to...shoot lightning from...its head or somewhere. And it shot it at the monster. I don't know what magic spell there is that looks like _that_. But Dhalan's been more places than I have, and he's seen more things. I'll ask him about it later.

Dhalan said the lightning-bolt was so loud he had to cover his ears. My guess is that this is what I thought was thunder, earlier. And he said it felt strange, in the air. He said he couldn't describe it any other way than by saying it made the air crack, and it made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle all over. After the first blast, the monster fled--Dhalan didn't know where--and the giant followed and blasted again--the second roll of thunder I heard.

Porter told me once about some kinds of water-dwelling fish that can hunt by creating jolts of electricity from their own bodies. He said it stuns any other nearby water-fish, and that that's how they catch their prey. Could this have been one of those fish? Mud-dwelling instead of water-dwelling? But water-fish are so small.

But I'm below the clouds. Why should I expect anything to be as it ought to be? Does it matter? I'm in Deep Sky. I'm in Deep Sky. Moons, are we going to get out of here? I shall not dwell on it.

When I heard the thunder, I raced to get outside. _My stomach is feeling better, Shanda is singing, and now rain!_ I thought. But when I got to the hatch, all I saw was a series of odd happenings. First, I saw Shanda accidentally do a back-flip from off her usual place on the prow-ward part of the hull. Greys was already out on the platform, and Shanda landed on her hands and feet near him, I think. I'm not sure. I was distracted by the big shadow that was the monster, soaring over our ship and up the slope. Did it knock her off? And then Porter bustled up behind me with two huge pots, saying "We've got to collect it, we've got to collect it!" I guess he thought it was rain, too. I feel bad for Porter. He's lost it completely, I think.

And then everybody just _stopped_, and stared, as the giant flew overhead. It was enormous. It loomed like an island in the darkness. I couldn't believe how big it was. I'm sure one swiping fly-by with its body would be enough to crush our ship all to splinters. The giant chased the monster up the slope, _way_ up the slope, so far I could barely see them through the dark haze, and then the pursuit wheeled around to the left, and went back downward, until they both disappeared into the blackness.

And then we remembered Dhalan.

But Porter had disappeared into his quarters again.

Shanda went into immediate hysterics, lashed on a pair of sleds, and ran down the slope. I remember thinking it was funny: I didn't know that somebody could sled over the mud that fast--and then being ashamed for thinking something like that, when I should have been worried about Dhalan. So Greys and I lashed on our own sleds and followed as fast as we could.

It was a little difficult finding Dhalan's sled-tracks. There were a lot of tracks down the slope; we just tried to find the freshest ones. I don't know if Shanda thought about this. She just ran on ahead, shrieking "_Dhalan! Dhalan!_" And pretty soon she was so far ahead of us that we had trouble seeing her.

And I griped, "Great, we're going to lose her!"

And Greys quipped back, "Only a deaf man could lose _her_."

And we laughed and continued on. But it was a shallow laughter--we didn't know if we were going to find Dhalan.

But we did find him. Shanda found him. We heard them calling to each other, and then Shanda yelling for us to come. When we got to where they were, Shanda was wiping Dhalan's cutlass clean of the mud. Dhalan was sunk, at an odd angle, up to his armpits.

It took us almost an hour to get him out. The mud made him weigh about three times as much as he should have, and the suction beneath him was horrible. One of his sleds had snapped, and we never found the skewer.

It was hard going for him on only one-and-a-half sleds, but we managed to get him back to the platform. When we got back we heard Porter weeping inside the ship. Greys got mad and went inside, to smack some sense into Mr. Porter, I hoped. That's bad of me; I shouldn't think that.

Meanwhile, Dhalan asked Shanda to find him some dry clothes. And then he asked me to help him peel off his vest, shirt and trousers. It was cold and wet and grainy and awful. Once that was done, I came in here with a mad log-lust about it, and was surprised to remember that I had thought it was thunder. I don't know why. But that was a long time ago, and Dhalan has long since come inside and gone to bed and stayed there.

Ah, and it strikes me. I said before that I envied him. I do not envy him now. That's...funny.

I shouldn't think like that. What's wrong with me?

We've decided not to fish downslope anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

Thank you, reviewers! You are all beautiful people!  
Sorry for the slow update and the fluffy chapter. I'm presently very distracted by an all-consuming sewing project at home. Halloween's a-comin'!

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Sixteenth Waking.

We're still here.

Greys said think positive. Positive. Positive.

What is there?

Are we going to live?

We have not seen the monster or the giant or any others like them again.

We still drink blood. I still get stomach-aches. Can we live like this?

Positive? Anything?

All we can do is stay alive. Here in this sunless land. We don't want to use too much energy.

Where are the Moons? I don't see them.

All I can do is remember.

I need something positive. Something positive.

But there is nothing here at present. And I can only remember. Are all the positive things in my memory only? Is that the only place left for them? Behind me? I've had them all my life--what a _wonderful_ life I've led. I've been happy, well-fed, and loved by my family.

But now I am sunk to Deep Sky, surviving on mud-worms, and... And. I'm sure somewhere in the skies above us, someone is still loving me. That's positive. I've found something: My family still loves me. Grandma, my sister Elena, uncle Sal and all my cousins. What will they do when I don't come back at the end of the season? But at least I got to see Elena's wedding. She and Diego will be very happy. But that story is in the black leather notebook with the long strap. That was the journal I used before this voyage. Before the one that burned. So I guess I can say that it was my last journal before this one.

My last journal.

But I don't think anyone will ever find this one. So the black one with the long strap really is my last journal. My last journal to the world. I shouldn't think like that.

How did I end it? I was making my writing very small--I hate running out of room at the end. I was writing about growing up. About how it was just a moment ago that Elena was ten and I was seven and we were climbing trees and playing hide-and-seek. And now she's married. Odd, the flight of time.

Happy things, happier times, only in my memory.

No. Not only in my memory. In my journals too. And those are safe back home. Except for the one that burned. It was so nice. The cover was light-beige leather, and it had a shiny brass buckle and strap to keep it closed. There were brass buttons and things woven into the spine, too. Whenever I would pick it up and hold it open, the brass points would always feel cold against my hand, and then slowly warm up.

I must sound like a fool. Here going on about a book as if it were my one true love.

Maybe it is.

Before I left, Elena pestered me to get rid of all my books, to clean up a bit. I said "No way." Writing, reading, paper and books, it's what I _do_. I can't just disregard it. They're full of knowledge, full of memory. I feel like letting them go would be like erasing part of myself. Like disappearing.

I don't want to disappear. I'm dead enough already. I'm in Deep Sky. I'm lost. Maybe the season's already over. Maybe somebody noticed the _Zephyrus_ never came back. Maybe my family's heard, and they're making a little monument for me on Grave Rock right now.

Is it day or night? I miss the sky.

Oh, I'm _very_ positive right now. What's wrong with me?

I like it better when I can just sink into memory, and relive something nicer. Sometimes I do that. We can't do very much else here. Sometimes I lapse into my own mind until I almost think I'm dreaming. I wish we could just dream ourselves away and back to the sky. That's what it feels like, remembering.

Other times I get visions in my head of living out our lives down here. These thoughts make me shudder, but I indulge them--there's nothing else to do. I can see us; we would become a mighty clan, blanketing the landscape, flitting over the mud where before we would have sunk, hunting the monsters and the giants, using their giant bones and their skins to build our dwellings. Or taming them to be our devil-steeds. Or learning to live like them. We would become a mud-people, and scour the bottom of the world for our nourishment. Savages. Animals.

Why do I write this down? Who would want to know this? But if I didn't write it down, it would be missing. Lost forever. The entry would be incomplete. I write it down because it's what happens. It's what I feel. I've written my happiness before; can I not write my misery?

But do I really want to remember the misery?

Maybe the log-lust _is_ a curse.

But I don't want to think of evil anymore. I want to remember something pleasant.

I don't remember the date, and I don't remember the finer details, but here's something from the one that burned: One time during mine and Haley's shift, there was a marocca that came up, looking to get a part of our catch, I think. It was a nasty one, too. We tried to fend it off with a mop-handle or something, but it didn't work very well. One of us, I won't say who, took a swing at it, and accidentally snapped the pole in half. So we each took a half, and kept trying to chase it away. But now we had a shorter reach, and we only succeeded in getting sucker-marks all up our arms. Then it chased us around the deck. I'm sure we must have looked like a couple of scared little girls. We ran around like idiots until Dhalan came out and finally killed it for us. But when he killed it, it inked him. Completely.

Ah, and I laugh. He just looked so funny. He's usually so stoic and taciturn. And he was still trying to look stoic and taciturn, it's just that he was... covered in marocca-ink from head to toe. He flung the dead marocca over the side, wiped off his cutlass, straightened up, and just looked so ridiculously dignified as he walked back inside and below decks to go wash up. So drenched, so wet... and yet still so dry.

Dhalan. I wonder what's in his head. I don't know a whole lot about him. He's just so quiet, so closed. Maybe I'll go talk to him.

That's something to look forward to. Getting to know someone better. That's something positive. And it's in front of me, not behind me.

How blest am I.


	8. Chapter 8

I _so_ appreciate you Reviewers like nothing else. Thank you, Reviewers!  
I'm terribly sorry for the slow update! I've been sewing nonstop for over a week and discovering some amazing ways to injure myself. See the link in my profile.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Seventeenth Waking.

Shanda is sick. She's hot with fever, and a gash on her left leg has become infected something foul.

Idiot girl! Why didn't she say something! But she said she didn't want anyone to worry. What, not even Dhalan? Her own brother? But she said she was doing the best she could to tend to it. Keeping it clean and covered, wrapped up. Would this have happened anyway? But no, Greys said he could have helped.

But why? Why is she sick, why are we here, and why do I still have the accursed impulse to write? Is this how castaways die? Or can she still get better? Can we still get out? Moons, I don't know! I just don't know. I don't know. I don't know. We can't be here.

She said she didn't want to tell anybody because... if she were doomed to infection from the start... with no way to fight it... if she were going to die, she didn't want people to think about it. But that's a stupid notion. She shouldn't think that. _I_ shouldn't think that.

And Greys said he didn't tell anybody about the loqua because he didn't want anybody to drink it.

And secrets, and curses, and self-reprimandings, all made senseless by each other.

Am I going crazy? But it makes me crazy. It makes me all confused in the pit of my stomach. How much longer do we have to live? How much? How long? Can we survive? Shanda is sick. Is she dying? Will it consume her? Questions and questions. I wish this hadn't happened.

And I stop, and breathe. I read this entry again, and the words are confusing. Who is reading this? Is there a real Someone Else reading this? Has my book been found? No, not mine. Haley's. Has someone found Haley's Book? Or am I speaking only to the Darkness?

But I am confusing. And I am confused. Moons, I am confused and frightened.

And I breathe. I can still breathe. I am alive.

Did I not once think this air was strange?

Wherever did we sink to...?

Yes, I hear you, log-lust. To make it plain. And I curse it. It wearies my hand.

The monster did not knock Shanda off the prow; she jumped off. In fear, surprise. The back-flip I saw her do. I don't know if she scraped her leg on the prow or on the platform. Neither does she; she couldn't remember. But she hurt herself anyway. And then with running downslope and helping Dhalan out of the mud. That could not have helped.

She said she didn't notice she was hurt until we got Dhalan back. But the gash was wide and already muddied. She tried to clean it. She had a few headscarves tucked away that she hadn't touched since before the crash. She used these to wipe it as clean as she could, and to bandage it. That was all she could do.

Maybe if we'd had water she could have washed it. Or could she have dared try the fish-blood? No that probably would have infected it sooner. Why is there no water? How are we living without water? But are we living at all? Or are we dying? Will we all get sick one day, and become feverish, and burn until we fall asleep and never wake up again?

And I want to say "Greys said think positive".

And I breathe. Will Shanda be all right?

And I keep breathing.

And I sit, and the log-lust torments me.

Dhalan discovered her fever and her wound at the beginning of this waking. It was already weeping clear fluids and pus. And when Greys found out he cursed himself. For, after we crashed, he had found and saved an unbroken bottle of Captain Peralta's loqua. He had been saving it in case it was needed to clean a wound like Shanda's. And he cursed himself for not making it known beforehand.

I've never seen Greys look so... grief-stricken. No, frustrated? Helpless? Angry? I cannot name the emotion I see on his face. But I have never seen it there before. Is it that painful to bear? Does it torment him so badly? But how could he have known that Shanda would not say she was hurt? I probably would have assumed the same thing.

Would I be as broken as he is now? Undone?

And I would hope that I would be as broken, for so grave a mistake as may yet cost a life. And yet I would also hope that I would not make the mistake of remaining silent in the first place. I've written myself into a trap. What does that mean? I don't know. My pen runs away with me.

And now Shanda is in bed. I say in bed, but we have no beds. The place where she sleeps. And Dhalan is with her. She's in a lot of pain. Her wound was doused in loqua a short while ago. I imagine her headscarf-bandages are still wet with it. Alcohol on an open wound is never pleasant, but she knows it helps--she did most of the dousing herself. I think she must be mad. Then when she couldn't stand it anymore, she just laid back and had Dhalan finish it up and bandage it.

I did speak to Dhalan yesterday--last waking. I found out some interesting things about him. Little things, like he used to actually be left-handed. But he broke that hand very badly six years ago, and while it was mending, he learned to do everything with his right hand. Even use a cutlass. His left hand is still weaker than his right.

But he told me something that made me sad. When he broke his hand, he couldn't play the harp anymore. I was very surprised. He doesn't seem like the kind of person to play the harp. Apparently it runs in their family to be musical. But I just can't see him doing something like that. That kind of thing is for melodramatic bards, or stuffy Valuan nobles who fancy it a pretty hobby. But it made me sad anyway, for something lost.

Something that you do all your life, and then losing it. Me, my journal, he, his harp. But I can still write. But what does Dhalan have? Is that why he is doing fishers' work? There's nothing wrong with fishing. It must be the oldest trade in the world. But does he wish he were more?

I've heard bards and musicians before, and they really are amazing. The skill it must take... harps and flutes, hornpipes, guitars... I can't do that. Maybe I could handle a drumbeat, but besides that... No, I know nothing about music. Dhalan told me he and Shanda had a pet bird once. They named it Koda, because it followed them everywhere. He said that was a musical joke, but I didn't get it.

He also told me--but I am hesitant to put it down. Is it too personal to him? It is most definitely none of my business. I will ask. There is no harm in asking.

I asked, and Dhalan said, "How else will people know what I was like, if you don't record it in your book?"

I will take it as a yes. I think he knows how sorely the log-lust vexes me. He knows I have to write everything I see, everything I hear, everything I do. And it makes me wonder, is that the reason why he told me? So I would record it? I admit, sometimes I feel as if the only way for me to survive is to write myself into this book. Maybe he's just looking to survive too. Then we'll be written down, and we can live forever.

I frighten myself.

But Dhalan. He also told me he once killed a man. That surprised me more than learning he was a musician.

Our crew came together on Isla de Faro, with Dhalan and Shanda having come from Nasrad. But before they lived in Nasrad, they lived in a smaller coastal town called Naja. The name sounds vaguely familiar to me, I don't know why. Naja was sacked by pirates, and Dhalan killed a man who tried to rape his sister.

He cares for her very much, and she for him. Shanda is the one with the infection, but Dhalan seems just as sick, if only with worry. But I can understand the bond between siblings. Sometimes I think of Elena.

And I miss her.

I cry.

Moons, I cry.

But no tears. Only a stinging.

And this is a thing unheard of. Porter has just come out of his quarters, and not to relieve himself. He's gone... to see Shanda? I can hear him speaking. He just asked how she's feeling? _What?_ This does not make sense.

Dare I wonder it? Is Porter... coming around again? Now he's talking with Dhalan. I hear their voices. Is he going to be okay? I'm worried about him. Everyone is worried about him. He doesn't eat or drink very much. Or should I be worried that he'll start eating and drinking more? It's getting harder to find the mud-worms. We have to look farther and farther away. But is that the thing I should be concerned about? What about Porter himself?

Porter, are you coming back to us?

I will go and talk with them.


	9. Chapter 9

Thank you, Reviewers. You win the internet.  
Marti, are you reading my brain?

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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19

Dhalan and Shanda and Porter are dead.

I can write no more.


	10. Chapter 10

Reviewers, I thank you kindly for your patience, especially after that last very abrupt chapter. I hope this one can sate your curiosity. Also, I have a small confession to make: I've just gone and changed a minor something in chapter two; just a little consistency problem. I wasn't thinking things _quite_ through. Anyway.

**Rated T** - The following chapter contains passages which may be disturbing to, well, just about anybody. Reader discretion is advised.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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My hand... It itches, and twitches.

I feel strange. I feel as if there were two of me, two selves. One says _Enough_, and wants to die. And one holds the pen, and demands that history--_my_ story--be told.

And I quail, and shrink, but I think again, it comes to me: Writing about bad things is better than not writing about them.

Writing about bad things is better than not writing about them.

Writing about bad things is better than not writing about bad things.

If I write it down more, will it become more true? After all, writing something down gives that thing power, right?

I feel sick.

And I look, and am surprised at myself. For I have never begun an entry without the date. Did I sleep... twice? Did I sleep at all? It feels like two sleepings, two times of sleeping.

That would make this the twenty-first waking. But is it a sleeping time again? Where is the sun, so that I may tell? Darkness and light, light and darkness, sky and cloud. What's happened to us?

It pains me, it feels like poison in my soul, what happened. Log-lust! _Who are you?_ That _you_ must know! _Why!_ You who _force_ my hand to _write_ and _write!_ That I relive my horrors!

But they would fester inside me?

They would eat me away, kill me. A poison.

But if I write them, the poison is drawn from me, and written into a book. Poison removed, and set aside.

But must it be written? It is still poison. Can it not die with me? _Sorrow of the dead_, I wish this hadn't happened. I wish none of this had happened. I wish we were not here. Would the Rains could streak down in fire and kill us all now.

For we are lost.

No, but I must write.

But it is evil, the memories are evil, they should die with me.

But a dead memory is no memory at all. A dead memory is lost, just like me. Would I cast my memory to the pits of Deep Sky as well?

No memory. Oblivion. Not knowing.

No, not knowing is worse. Much worse. Unknown. A poison is a poison, and known. But something unknown would be more evil, more intolerable, more painful. Empty. Would I leave that emptiness to whoever finds this book?

But no one will find it.

I don't know that.

Hand, why do you plague me so?

But I must make peace with myself. I am given a choice between the evil of writing, and the emptiness of not writing. And I choose the evil. I should have known it from the moment I began.

I should be happy that I have the pen with which to make the choice. How stupid.

And I surrender to the self of me that wants to write.

_Moons... _

To start? Where did I end? Two entries ago was the seventeenth waking. I went to speak with them.

For a brief time it seemed as if Porter were back to himself. But before the waking was through he holed himself up in his quarters again.

Shanda's body raged with fever for two wakings and two sleepings. She seemed a little delirious at one point. There were times when we had to force her to drink, to make sure she had enough fluid. Greys did that. Neither Dhalan nor I could bring ourselves to force-feed her fish-blood. And then, at the beginning of the nineteenth waking, her fever broke. Dhalan wept.

We were all relieved that Shanda was doing better. But by the beginning of that waking, we had already eaten our last mud-worm, and drunk our last dregs of fish-blood. We had to go fishing again. Greys decided he would take me. Shanda would stay, that much was given. And we decided to let Dhalan stay too, to be with his sister. Porter had taken back to hiding, so we left him anyway.

Greys and I hiked all day up and around the slope, far out on the prow-ward side. The yield in that direction was the most plentiful, or it had been. It was getting so hard to find the mud-worms. We had even tried fishing downslope again. But they were just not to be found. Blasted ugly fish-things. I had loathed them, but now I was worried for their over-fishing. We couldn't bear to return empty-handed. We searched and searched until we found only one, and it was very small and looked sickly. But it was getting late and we were getting tired, and it was all we could find. So we followed our tracks back down the slope.

When we got back to the _Zephyrus_, there was a fire on the platform. It made some of the big engine pieces we had left outside cast weird, twisting shadows. And it lit up the deck exactly the way the lanterns used to at night, when we were still at sky. I remembered the color of the wood.

We didn't know what it meant, so we hurried to get closer. I didn't know what to think. I don't remember being afraid, just... confused.

We saw the fire was built over a big metal sheet--it had been stripped from the oven in the galley--to keep the planks in the platform from burning. And set over the fire was a steaming pot. I remember thinking and wondering so hard--we had eaten the last mud-worm, hadn't we? Had there been anything more to cook and eat? And why was it outside? We never figured that out.

This is hard.

Just write.

I remember I went closer, and Greys said, "_Wait_." And I came around the big shadow and toward the platform.

Then I heard Porter's voice. I didn't see him, just heard his voice. And it... frightens me still. I can still hear him. His strange, mad tones, and it makes me think, _Why am I here? How did this ever happen? Why?_ He said--I can write it--Porter said, "Nasrean stew, boys? Or maybe I'll just put you in it!"

Then time seemed to split, and part of me stopped on "Nasrean stew". It was like a wall, with no seeing beyond. It felt like Haley dying all over again. Like the point when I knew that he was dead, but just didn't want to see it, tried to will it not to be so. My mind ran in circles, _No, no, no_, it said. Rising and falling, convincing and surrendering, convincing me _No_, and then surrendering _Yes_, over and over, faster and faster, and I thought I should go mad. Maybe I am now.

The other split of time went much faster, more mechanical, and my eyes followed it. I saw Porter come from crouching in one of the shadows between the two biggest pieces of engine to my right. All at once, at the words "put you in it", he jumped at me. He had Dhalan's cutlass in his right hand. Porter was a big man, and it was frightening to see him move so fast.

Something stupid in me realized that he was trying to kill me. I didn't want to die. But somewhere inside, dashing in and out of the No's and Yes's, I didn't really mind the idea--I even preferred it a little. If I died everything would be over, all this sadness and madness. But somewhere deeper down, I still didn't know, I was still unsure, and the No's held sway, and I wanted to live. But I just stood, and looked at Dhalan's cutlass reflecting the firelight. Then there was a loud bang like a snap of thunder, and Porter dropped the cutlass and collapsed at my feet. Greys shot him dead.

Then my heart started beating hard, and my head felt hot, and I felt like I couldn't breathe fast enough. My knees didn't want to work, but I wanted to find Dhalan and Shanda. I wanted to know. And then it was like a million mad demons clawing questions at my head: Did he kill Dhalan and Shanda? Did Greys really just kill _him?_ He was alive a moment ago. Greys kept a pistol? Are Dhalan and Shanda alive? The colors of the deck-wood in the firelight. Shadows deeper even than the dark limbo around us. _Why did Haley die?_

It haunts me.

My mind could not see, for all the burning and turmoil. But my eyes and my hands searched through the shadows cast by the engine pieces, looking hard and hating it. Fearing every glance I took but unable to stop for a greater fear of the unknown, of not knowing. The firelight made it a labyrinth of light and dark. It was a nightmare.

It is still a nightmare.

Write, write. It will be a nightmare for as long as I live. Forever.

I came toward the ship, thinking to search inside, and found Dhalan and Shanda.

I cannot write. I sit. What is the matter with me? It just... stops. My hand.

I came up to the deck of the _Zephyrus_, and found Dhalan and Shanda. They were both decapitated.

I am suddenly finding it easier to breathe. I feel as if I've broken through a wall. Is it my hand, is it my pen?

They were dead, and their--

Moons help me. I can write, I can write, it is drawing the poison from me, it erases the darkness and fills it with knowledge, because knowledge is better. Even knowledge so hellish. Not knowing would be the real hell.

I can write.

They were up against the deck, on the muddy planks next to the ship. The shapes did not look human. Was that why I did not see them right away? Their limbs were cut up into pieces. The meat was piled onto another platter from the galley, halfway in the shadow of a twisted piece of metal. I looked at the pot. I felt bewildered that I did not think to look there first. "Nasrean stew"? It stank of meat-food, and I felt sick.

I saw Greys stooping where Porter had been, and looking around the fire. There was a half-eaten bowl of already stewed flesh. The pot bubbled and I wondered how much Porter had eaten, how many servings.

I couldn't think, and my stomach hurt, and my head felt so hot. I looked at their bodies again and could only say "_Moons no, Moons no!_", willing and hoping it not to be real. I retched into the mud by the stern. I didn't think there was anything left in my belly to vomit up, but something found its way. Greys yelled something at me, but I didn't understand him. My head was on fire and my eyes blurred with tears. All I could think of was death, death, death. All around me, eating ourselves, lost in the mud at the bottom of the world. I turned back and saw the fire, and Greys looming like a giant near me, and then I was alone in a very dark place.

I fainted. I had never fainted before. I felt hands under my back, moving me, but I just wanted to be left alone. It felt like a half-forgotten dream, and I didn't want to come back. I just wanted to lie down and stay in the dark. Then one hand came up under my head, and something touched my lips, and water ran down my throat.

We have water, o blessed miracle.

At first I didn't remember, and simply drank it. It tasted thin and metallic. Then I realized what it was, and all my senses immediately returned. I opened my eyes all the way, focused them. Greys was kneeling by me. His right hand was under my head, and in his left hand he had water in a cup. Then all the demon-questions came back. It felt as if they all vied for my voice. But all that came out was a moan. All the questions, all the sorrow, all the madness, all the death. They couldn't form themselves, I couldn't speak. All I could do was cry.

I rolled toward him and cried and cried, like a child. He dragged me up and hugged me against him and allowed me one moment of this. I thought of uncle Sal--he's the closest thing I have to a father. I felt like a child, helpless, nothing, nothing. Death. Yet Greys still stood strong, still picked me up, still held me steady. How does he do it? How does he keep his head?

But after a moment, he said, with increasing firmness in his voice, "All right, now stop... _stop_... not right now." He told me I should save my tears--my body might need the fluid. And he added, "Try not to vomit again." It's that much more fluid and nourishment I should try to keep inside me. I resented that he spoke as if I could have helped it, but I cannot begrudge his advice. It makes enough sense.

How can he be so strong? How can he endure it? And he killed Porter. Greys saved my life.

Greys saved my life. That is... difficult to take in. Even now.

Knowledge unwritten.

So I stopped crying, and I remembered the water, and asked where it had come from. Greys had found it hidden in Porter's quarters. He saw that there had been water in the stewing pot on the fire. Porter had been hiding it. He had been keeping water in leather skins buried behind a plank in his room. Greys also found two moldy biscuits in the bottom of a sack in the same alcove.

Did he ever eat the mud-worms? All the knocking up against his door, bringing him his portions, his _fair portions_... What did he do with them? All the mud-worms we caught. And he would take it up and close his door and set something heavy over it. Paranoid, but we thought he had been eating them--he stayed alive long enough. All that meat and blood, was it all wasted? Did he have his own store all that time? Biscuits! How many biscuits? How many biscuits? I miss biscuits.

Greys produced the two moldy ones and we each ate one and felt like kings. Hungry, tired, miserable kings of mud. And we had water. Water, _water_... I have never tasted anything so welcome and sweet in my life. It was the greatest meal I thought I should ever have. Moldy bread and stale water, and it was delicious to me, the grandest food and drink.

But it did not satisfy, it did not fill. Before then, we had not eaten all waking, nor most of the waking before. And we were still hungry. And Greys bled our tiny mud-worm into the pot, and cooked the meat over the fire. We divided the meager catch, and were not much sated. The hike around the slope had taken everything, and we needed our strength. And Greys looked at me, and his eyes spoke, and I was sad.

Evil? Or Oblivion? I would rather keep my Doom than extinguish its memory. Because then, it is known.

Are we animals?

The mud-worms were gone. The biscuits were gone. The water was scarce. It is scarcer now. But there was meat for us. Our only food left. We cooked more, and ate, and we were filled.

It tastes... kind of salty.

Then before I slept, the log-lust came to me, and I cursed it and sent it away. I allowed it a few words, but my grief would not allow more.

And I denied my tears, and laid me down, and sank into darkness, and slept.

Greys is here. The sleeping must be over, then. I did not sleep. There is no time now. It is time for us to go.


	11. Chapter 11

Thank you so much for your wonderful comments, Reviewers. And, while I'm at it, to those of you who don't review, thank you for reading anyway. I see the hits I get in my stats for this piece, and those numbers also help me to keep writing. So thank you for the hits. Of course, I'd always love to hear from you in a review, too!

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Twenty-Second Waking.

But then, I did not sleep. I did not sleep between this entry and the previous one. Does that make this still the twenty-first waking? There is nothing to measure by to make any number _right_.

Aha, and something ridiculous, it strikes me. I did faint. Does that count as a sleeping? It was only a few moments, but they were not a conscious few moments. Maybe this is the twenty-second waking after all.

But then I was supposed to have slept, so I will stay with calling it the twenty-second waking.

I am very tired. I should have slept.

No, if I slept I would not have recorded the Doom.

Yes, it is good to remember, and bad to forget.

Greys and I are on the mountain. We have left the _Zephyrus_. She was a fine ship.

She was a fine ship?

I write strange. Like a bard's tale.

She was a fine ship,  
the _Zephyrus_ fair.  
But pirates descended  
down out of the air,  
and fires they flamed,  
and lives they claimed,  
'til down went the ship  
in utter despair.

I just made that up. Really. That was strange. So weary and yet my mind sends these things through my pen, somehow.

I've read much better poetry.

No, enough of this, I must record. Yes I am tired. But I must tell you.

We have left the _Zephyrus_. We cannot survive there any more. We tried for as long as we could, but we must leave her be, in her muddy grave. She can sustain us no longer. Farewell, _Zephyrus_. And we will walk. We have walked. All this waking. We are walking up the slope. We do not know what we will find, but we know that to stay behind would be to die.

We have taken all the water that Porter had hidden. The skins are fairly large, but, not really. There are two left, one full, the other nearly so.

Porter. And Dhalan and Shanda. We left them.

No, we left--I cannot write this and not sound evil to myself.

We have taken a supply of meat with us. We took what we needed, all that we could carry, and laid the remains beside Haley's marker. Porter was too heavy. We composed him on the platform and covered him with a canvas tarp. Perhaps in time the mud will take them all into its bosom. We did not take meat from Porter.

I have taken Shanda's ring. I keep it on a cord around my neck. It was... hard to find. Gruesome. Writing about it... sounds wicked to me now. Is it grave-robbery? But I wanted it. It is memories. It seems... too precious a thing to leave down here. Not in the mud, not in this darkness. It should see the light again. I have also taken Dhalan's cutlass. I keep it clean. He always did, so I try to as well.

I am a walking collection: Shanda's ring, Dhalan's blade, and Haley's book. Anything from Porter? We have his water-skins. Captain Peralta? There is still some loqua left. I hope we will not need it. I am happy that Greys is still here to carry himself. If he were not... could I carry on with the weight of six people behind me? But I will not think of it, of what might have been. I should only think of what lies ahead of me. Ahead of us. Greys said think positive.

Is that what has saved him? Is that why he is still alive? Is that why _I_ am still alive? Have my thoughts been positive? It seems a depressing log I have kept. My other journal, the one that burned, was much happier, much more positive. Well of course. Anything is more positive than _this_.

I should stop, else I run myself in circles.

Thinking positive. Well, Greys is still alive, isn't he? Maybe it _is_ what saves him.

We have taken the meat with us, and the water, and the loqua, two small pots, a few thick blankets and some extra planks, a big length of rope, one lantern and a lot of moonstone fragments. Greys and I took the big moonstone out of the chamber in the engine, and we chipped off some smaller pieces from it. The shapes aren't exactly perfect, but if we jam them in at the right angle, they work all right powering the lantern. We haven't had decent lantern light in quite a few wakings. Maybe I used too much of it for writing. But we have plenty of moonstones to use now. The big one from the engine would have been too heavy to take with us in one piece. It had to be big enough to power the whole ship, and the oven in the galley. It hadn't been replaced in a long time, but I think the fragments will still be good for a while.

We put everything on sleds made of more planks. Wrapped up and tied down. We drag the sleds behind us with a rope over each shoulder. Loops for our arms, like sleeves.

I have to stop. I must sleep. On planks on the mud.


	12. Chapter 12

Reviewers, you have no idea how much I appreciate you. Thank you.  
Now then, you, the person who's been reading this the entire time and has never left a review, you know who you are... I want to hear from you too! I really don't bite... most of the time...

**Note:** The chapters may be getting shorter in the near future.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Twenty-Third Waking.

It is cold, and I am sore. We've hiked quite far this waking. We are doing very wide switchbacks.

I was describing the sleds we made. We each carry two. Or we drag them behind us. One for our supplies and one to sleep on. We kept the lashings short, so the front ends would stay above the mud and not get stuck. And we secured our sleeping-boards directly behind our supply-boards, so they overlap like shingles. That's how we sleep, too, with the head-end of the sleeping-board propped up on part of the supply-board. But even set up like that, the board still sinks under your weight when you sleep. It was hard to get going when we started this waking. You have to pry them out.

At least it is cold enough. For the meat. For a while.

I'm tired of this.

I wish it was not mud. It makes it seem so slow. And in the dark it only seems as if we are marching back and forth, back and forth, sinking down all the while, and never making progress.

Greys said think positive. Why do I write that?

To make me remember.

We do make progress. We only use the lantern when we stop to eat and rest, and if we focus the beam and shine it down the slope we can see our tracks. We do make progress.

But it seems so slow sometimes.

It's a dismal place, and I am not looking forward to sleeping here again. It is probably well that I was so exhausted after my last entry. Elsewise I doubt I could have slept if I tried. Not in this limbo. But I did sleep. Right on the mud. Did that prospect not once terrify me? Sleeping out of the ship? But you can sleep anywhere if you are tired enough. Anywhere. Maybe that's what death is. No matter where you are, your body just gets so tired of everything that it stops, and you sleep forever.

Greys said think positive. I write it again?

Am I crazy?

I eat my friends for breakfast. That's crazy.

What's wrong with me?

My core aches, something inside of me. It makes me sick and hurts my chest. My heart.

I can sleep here. We have stopped for the day, and there is nothing else, nothing for it, so I must sleep here. I must, therefore I can.

I like the sound of that. I must, therefore I can.

It makes me feel... stronger. It is only mud. It is only the bottom of Deep Sky, and there is nothing to be afraid of. Ha! And I laugh and laugh! There is nothing to be afraid of at the bottom of Deep Sky! How can it be? I laugh.

And Greys looks at me. I laugh again, smaller, quieter in embarrassment. Maybe I am going crazy.

He asked what was so funny. And I told him: It's only the bottom of Deep Sky. Nothing to be afraid of. Literally. He laughed too.

Wait, we talk.

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Thank you for letting me read your log, Mr. Reyes. And thank you for letting me record my own say. I am sorry that this voyage did not turn out for the better. But I am glad that you have found solace in your writing. You keep a better log than I ever did, and I believe it has helped you a great deal in overcoming our situations. I have seen you grow in these pages, and for whatever it is worth, I am proud of you.

I am taking your suggestion to write what is too great to say aloud. It is true what you said about poison. It festers inside, and I can carry mine no longer.

What happened to our crew was my doing. I knew from the beginning that the ship could never be repaired. I thought we would be able to survive longer if we had some hope to go on, even a false hope. That is why I led you and Dhalan to believe early on that we could salvage the engine.

But I did not want to be alone in my deception. I wanted someone to help me share that burden. I confided in Mr. Porter about the true state of our ship. I believe this is what caused him to react the way he did. I realize now that perhaps if I had kept the knowledge to myself, things may have gone differently. In looking for my own solace, I took away Mr. Porter's hope from the beginning. And so I feel responsible for what he did. It was I who drove him into madness, and caused him to kill Dhalan and Shanda. And though I value your life very highly, I find little redemption at having saved you from the same fate. I feel as if I have destroyed the last shreds of what crew we had, and I beg for your forgiveness.

All of that is my last secret. And I have written it for you, and for whoever else may read it, because secrets like this _should not be taken to the grave_.

Mr. Reyes, know that I consider you one of the finer sailors I have put out to sky with. If I was glad of your level-headed company aboard the _Zephyrus_, I am gladder of it still here on the mountain. You asked who the leaders turn to for surety. The last time I confided in someone it proved to be a terrible mistake. But I do not think it is a mistake to confide in you. I will always consider you my friend, and I would hope that you would think the same of me.

Moons light your way.

_Samuel Greys_


	13. Chapter 13

Okay, sorry about the long delay, I can explain, I swear... Last weekend I got mauled by a plot-bunny named Willie while simultaneously hatching a mad scheme that had been incubating for almost a year. I blame the bunny-attack on Verizon and Marti's friend DanikaLareyna (who writes awesome fics; read them). And Marti, I blame the hatching of the mad scheme on your sister. Give her my profound gratitude for suggesting that CD, will you?  
Thank you for everything, Reviewers. Your input means so much to me.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Twenty-Fourth Waking.

I have read Greys' notes. We talked a lot before last sleeping. Greys asked if he could read my log. His voice sounded strange when he did. Like a man close to breaking. It sounded so unnatural, not like him. He's First Mate Greys, he's so strong. But I guess even he is human, too.

So I let him read the entire thing. I hadn't realized how large this journal had become. I didn't expect it to take so long for him to read it. But it did, and I was tired from hiking that waking, so I took to dozing. I heard him laugh a few times. I remember him recalling his joke about Shanda being loud, and he laughed at the Nasreans' pet bird they used to have. He told me a "koda" is the tail-end of a piece of music--it follows the beginning. So now I know why they named their bird Koda.

This is almost funny. Was I the only non-musician in our crew? Now I wonder how much _Greys_ knows about music. Wait, I will ask. He said he learned it from Dhalan and Shanda. He had asked them about the songs Shanda would sing, and all about Nasrean music. I suppose I could have guessed it. He says he takes every opportunity he can to learn. I find that...admirable. What untold stores of knowledge must he have?

Now that I think about it, I do remember him at the beginning of the season. Getting to know all of us, all of the crew. He had been just inquisitive enough to still be called polite. I remember he asked me about my books and pens. I love my pens. Uncle Sal got them for me for my last birthday. Real quality ink-pens made in Valua. They have the ink already inside them. I was so excited to get those. I have four more.

But yes, I can see now. He did ask a lot of questions. Just polite questions in passing, in his dry, aloof tone, almost gruff. It makes me wonder how much I would know if I spent more time talking and less time recording.

But I can only move forward from here. That's all anyone can do.

Where am I? Greys read my log. Then he asked if he could add to it.

I was a little taken aback. My immediate reaction was selfish, to say no, to protect it. But then I considered. We are in Deep Sky. There is nothing here, and I must have the only paper and ink for a hundred leagues. And he must have something to say, too. So I told him "Of course," and gave him my pen.

Then when he was writing I must have finally fallen asleep. When I woke up this waking, the book was safe in my rucksack. I had thought to look at it, but we had to get going. We ate, and went.

I don't know if there's something wrong with me. Was I just blind? Or is Greys just hard to understand? He seemed so solid and strong and sure. But now he seems just as lost as I am, as I have felt this whole time. Is this Porter all over again for him? Telling me what happened? Does he think he's taking away my hope in finding another solace for himself? But I can't let that happen. I will not become a Porter. I cannot.

Moons he _killed_ Porter. Can I even think of that? Can Greys even think of that? What did it do to him? He killed a man. His own crew. To save someone else. Still his own crew. Does it drive him mad? Would it drive me mad? Choosing the lives of others. But I am glad he did what he did. And it sickens me. Glad for another's death? I don't know who is worse off, me for being thankful at another's demise, or Greys for actually causing it. Two evils, and which is the lesser? Does it matter? And yet still, this face he wears. Still so calm. Still so steady. Even when we... took the meat. I could not do it. I could not even bear to watch. But Greys finished what Porter started. For us, for our sustenance. Always practical. What is in his head? It made me feel sick.

No, he is human, he is human. Like me. On their bodies the damage was already done, the butchery already begun, perhaps that made it easier for him. But he left Porter's body. He would not start another, not a new body. He is human. Human like me. He would not do that.

Maybe he has felt lost this whole time, but has been hiding it behind his calm air. I hide enough behind my pen and paper. Maybe everyone was hiding. Maybe everyone is still hiding. Can we ever truly know what another person thinks? Maybe we're all trapped in these body-vessels, looking out our eyeballs like windows, receiving signals through our ears, feeling reality through a hull of skin. But what goes on inside the cabin of the vessel? Where we are truly alone, all to ourselves? Greys' vessel is painted on the outside like a mighty pillar, steadfast in the tempest, cold and hard and real in the phantom dream and fog. But what is he inside? Under the paint? A crumbling stone? Breaking and worn, covered with moss and spiders? A mighty pillar still? How can I even guess? All I can see is the paint on the outside.

I'm writing myself crazy.

I sigh and it seems faster. My breath. Easier. Was this what the air was like before we crashed?

That does it for our water. Finally gone. I didn't want to make myself sick with worrying about it. So I didn't write it. But now it's gone.

Is this where we die?

Now we are truly down to nothing.

But we still have a little meat. Maybe there is some juice in the bottom of the tarp. Shivers I sound sick! What is wrong with me! Why are we here?

I breathe. Because we crashed. And we can only move forward.

I feel as if I ought to say something final. I don't know how long we can last now. It makes me sad. Or it would, if I were not so tired. Or am I calm?

I just feel odd. Is death near? Is it frightening? Does it hurt?

Why am I thinking this? All I can do is keep going. I have to keep moving. What? Am I afraid? There is nothing here to be afraid of.

I don't know when my last entry will be. So in case I don't get another chance, I will say this: My home island, Naranja, is in Mid Ocean, eight leagues northeast of la Torre Vieja, close along the stone-reef. There is a small orange-grove on the south side.

Whoever you are, if you've found this book and are reading it, please take it to my island, to my grandmother, Rosa Carmen de los Reyes, or her son Salvador, or any of his children. Anyone of the name Reyes.

I feel strange. Like writing from the dust.

From there I would want it to go to Elena. I want her to have all of my books. Elena is my closest family, but she and Diego sailed away south to another island. I don't know exactly where it is. But Uncle Sal would know.

I feel so strange. It's like carving your own gravestone, and I don't know how it's done, and it makes me... uneasy.

But I can only keep moving forward. I just have to keep telling myself that. Just keep moving forward, just keep moving forward.

But I am a little afraid. I shouldn't have reason to be, but I am. Before there was nothing to be afraid of. Now there is just... nothing. A growing nothing. Maybe it's just the moonstones wearing down, but our lantern doesn't seem to shine as far as it used to. I remember my fear: the unknown thing, the unrecorded, unseen oblivion. I am afraid because we are hiking into it. It is as if the air is getting thinner and thicker at the same time. Thinner to the breath, thicker to the eyes. The distance to the horizon seems to shorten itself with each passing hour, but we never reach an end. Just up and up and up, and mud. Are we still moving up? Are my eyes playing tricks on me? Maybe they are. Or maybe the world is shrinking. Or maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I already am crazy, or maybe I'm already dead, and I only _think_ I'm still alive. A ghost in the mud.

Greys said think positive. Greys said think positive. "I've written that before." Ha!

No, I've got to snap out of it. Make myself think clearly. No, we'll be all right. But for now we will sleep. In our shrinking world. But what if the world ends? What if we fall off the edge into oblivion?

I'm just scared.

Maybe Greys is scared too.

Am I doing it right? I would want it to be the last thing I say, in case I die: I love you, dear family.


	14. Chapter 14

Thank you, Reviewers. Hearing from you gives me such encouragement. Too bad I can't glomp over the internet. Ah well. Next installment! Oh, and just a reminder. It ain't over till it's over.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirtieth Waking.

I am sorry I have not written for so long. But you can't tell the difference, can you? But I have so much to tell you!

We are tired and cold and wet! Rain! We have seen rain! Water from the sky! It's run down our faces and in our hair and clothes. And we are both freezing. And I am so very happy to finally be out of it. It makes everything worse. Except that we have water now.

But we made a terrible mistake. We only took the _two_ waterskins from Porter's alcove. We should have taken more. We could have collected more water from the rain, and carried it with us. But we only have two full waterskins. And a little that we managed to catch in the tarp with some careful folding and tying. The meat we used to keep there is nearly gone. Two waterskins and a tarp of water. There is nothing else for it. But the rain was good. Cold as it was, the water was good. Water is always good.

No not always--I couldn't write. I did not dare unwrap my journal from its nest in the middle of my rucksack. I couldn't shelter it in the rain; the ink would have run. But the log-lust plagued me. It always plagues me. And I didn't know how long the rain would last. So I just counted the wakings. I used Dhalan's cutlass to notch the sidemost plank of my sleeping-board. One notch for each waking that I could not write. I started the waking after my last entry, and there are six notches, including this waking. Six wakings. Has it been that long? That long and that short? Six seems such a small number, but such a long time to go. It seems great and small at the same time. But _rocks!_

Forgive my scattering mind. There are rocks! There _is_ rock! Rock under our feet. Real, solid ground like the ports. The ground is still slanted, and most of it is more like pack-dirt, but there are washes of pebbles and gravel, and big tumbles of shale and big boulders, and very occasionally a great bald sheet of unbroken stone. _Rocks!_ Rocks like you would throw off into the sky or skip across a pond! Real, and hard. When we were climbing--No, but I can't start there.

I feel... _excited!_ --for lack of a better word. And that is something I have not felt in so long and it is making me... drunk. I am drunk on rocks. Who else in all the world can say that he has been drunk on rocks?

I must be mad.

I am calming down. Let me start at the start. Begin at the beginning.

I have made it my ritual to write just before I sleep. But I did not get a chance to at the end of the twenty-fifth waking because of the rain. I had been very worried. As we hiked that waking, the darkness grew thicker with every hour, and we could not see very far in front of us. And near the end, a little before we stopped, we realized it was because we were hiking into the clouds. The moisture became very heavy in the air, and then it drizzled on us.

The ripping black canopy we had seen above us waking after waking. Now we were entering into it. Do you remember? Back in the mud, there were only three things: the mud, the sky, and the horizon. But now we are _in_ the clouds, and there is only the ground and the sky, they seem to blend together. Nothing that can really be called a horizon. Or sometimes only a very faint one. It's a strange world to be inside of. I was afraid my world would shrink? Well it has; its width is only a stone's cast. I know, because now we have stones, and I have cast them, and I cannot see where they land. Only to the top of the arc, and then they vanish in the dark.

But the rain was worse! It made the world even _smaller_. Smaller than a stone's cast in width. But it was also good, because we were very thirsty. We drank and collected it. It ran down our faces. The first rain since our underworld-marooning.

Have you ever sipped the rain from your lip when it runs into your mouth? I think everyone does that. With rain or tears. I did it with the rain. But at first it tasted filthy. Greys stared at me strangely. Then I knew why, because the same thing was happening to _his_ face. We had become so dirty, our skin so caked and dark. But the rain washed the mud off our faces. Greys looked very pale.

I wonder if it is because he is not in good health. I don't think either of us are in good health. But perhaps he looked pale because our faces had become so dark that we did not remember how bright they were before. Maybe I look as pale to him as he does to me. Maybe we both look like ghosts.

So that was why the water tasted dirty off my lip. _We_ were dirty. But once our immediate need for drink was satisfied, we simply stood and rubbed out our hands and faces in the rain. I do not know how so much mud seemed to have gotten into my hair. It felt refreshing to get it out. As if I had been smothering all along and could now breathe again. Through my scalp. How strange.

After this drinking and showering, we tried to go on a little farther, and found that it was very difficult to move. Because the rain made it horrible.

But at least the ground was slanted. The puddles that threatened to form always spilled away downslope. But the mud was still horrible. It was still mud.

But now we have rocks!

My mind moves faster than my hand can speak.

The mud was horrible. Very wet. The sleds did not work like they had down in our abyss with the _Zephyrus_. Here the mud sucked and pulled us down harder. So we stopped. But I did not write. I did not want the ink to smudge or run. I wrapped up my journal in a shirt in my rucksack, and marked one notch in my sleeping-board instead.

It was hard to settle down for the night. The boards threatened to slide down. We could fit everything on only one supply-board by then, so we took the other supply-board apart and lashed it differently, to make something of an anchor. It looked like big teeth, or part of a fence. We lashed the sleeping-boards and the remaining supply-board to it, and then stuck it as deep into the mud as we could. I think that it worked out all right; we did not move during the night--or the _sleeping_, sorry.

I rhymed. Is it strange?

But the mud. Even though the top was slimy and slippery, when we anchored us down, the texture seemed firmer, grainier underneath. And as far as we could tell, we did not slip downslope while we slept. When we wrenched out the anchor-spikes the next waking, the holes stayed fairly solid. But it was still raining, and they filled with water, and we moved on.

But that was hard too. To get going and move. Even though we had not slipped downslope, the mud was still too soft. When we woke up, our sleeping-boards were deeper in the mud than they had ever been. It was so hard to get them out. Greys' board we had to pry out with one of the leftover planks.

Walking became more difficult. You had to lash your foot to a position further back on the sled, or the front end would get stuck too easily. But we kept going.

It was so hard. It kept raining, and it felt like we weren't going anywhere. I slipped a lot. Greys did too. And in the rain our tracks did not show. We couldn't see them when we shone the lantern back behind us.

I missed seeing our tracks. At the end of each waking, it had made me feel like I had done something. Accomplishment. But in the rain it felt as if I had nothing to show for my effort. Had we gone anywhere? Just slick mud, in the rain, and an odd gait up the slope.

It was hardest when I was towing the supply-board. We took turns towing the boards. One of us would tow the supply-board, and one would tow the two sleeping-boards.

We just kept going and going, and it just kept raining and raining. Wake up, eat cold meat, pry out, lash up, hike. Stop, unlash, anchor down, mark a notch, sleep. Again and again. It seemed like it was more than just six.

But then, was it last waking? Or the waking before? Greys was in front of me, and he said, "Mr. Reyes, come up here." And I could hear a smile shaping his words. He kept going, and I followed, and my sleds scuffed on hard rock.

And I said, "Rock!"

And he said, "Yes."

I stopped to look at it and feel it with my hands, but he said, "Let's keep moving."

So we did. There wasn't much to see anyway. A lot of mud was still on top.

There was more mud, but--I remember now, it was two wakings ago, that would be on the twenty-eighth waking then. There was more mud, and we only encountered one more spot of rock that waking, and then we slept.

Then on the twenty-ninth waking, we saw more and more bald places of rock peeking out of the mud. And the rain thinned a little. It did not stop, but it lightened just enough for the world to grow a few more paces. But it was still too wet for me to take out my journal.

And we saw more rock. And more and more. And when we woke up this waking, our boards did not need prying. And also this waking, miracle and wonder, our sledding was easier than ever. Maybe soon we will not need to use our sleds, and we will be able to shed the extra weight. We will see.

I think that I am... happy, for the rock. The pack-dirt and rock.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	15. Chapter 15

Reviewers, you rock my socks off. Thank you for your patience.  
Wow, this chapter was hard to write.  
I am happy to say that I successfully completed National Novel Writing Month by the skin of my teeth (having written my last twenty-nine-thousand words during the last three days of November). However, NaNoWriMo did rather eat my soul, and pretty much totally threw off my Haley's Book groove. That's why this chapter was so difficult for me; my brain is still on some other planet chasing very different lines of plot. So please, if I could ask a favor of you--if anything seems... _out of character_ for Reyes in any way, don't hesitate to pm me or say something in a review. If something's out-of-whack I want to fix it.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirty-First Waking.

There is a song in my head.

I realized something after my last entry. Usually, when I begin a new journal, I'll start with my name. I didn't in this one, because... this is not my book. This book belongs to Derek Haley. I looked, and I did cram my name into the first entry, but I didn't want to seem like, I don't know, like I were claiming it for my own. It's still Haley's.

Having it, it makes me feel... I don't know. Bad things haunt me. And then I kept thinking to put it in, my name, but it always made me feel bad or wrong for wanting to. And then eventually I just... forgot about it. But when I signed my ending mantra last waking, I remembered.

I usually put something like this in the beginning of a journal:

My name is Alexandro Estevan de los Reyes, son of Carlos Estevan and Felicia Maria Fernandez de los Reyes. I live on Naranja, Mid Ocean, with my sister Elena, my grandmother Rosa Carmen, my uncle Salvador, and his children and my cousins Seth, Carla, Josephine and Michael.

Shivers that scared me. Thunder. Not fish-thunder, real thunder. It rained a little bit this waking, but it's been thundering most of the time. That one was very loud.

Is it wrong to claim this book as my own? Is that why it thundered? Haley...?

Now I'm afraid to even write.

It rumbles in the dark sky, in our tiny world. _Haley I'm sorry!_ I'm sorry, I'm sorry, how can I--what more is there left for me to say or do?

I sit.

And do you know _where_ I sit? I sit upon a sheet of rock.

It feels... disrespectful to change the subject so. But I want to tell you.

There are no sleds on my boots. We didn't need the sleds this waking. The rock, the _ground_--is solid enough for us to walk on. It was strange when I took them off; I felt slightly shorter, and my hands felt unoccupied without the ropes. But my legs remembered what to do. It feels good to walk with just my boots again.

We definitely will not need the anchor-board again. And we may not even need the sleeping-boards anymore. There are places where we can lie flat. I'm sitting on one of them now. I could stretch out and lie flat and sleep here if I wanted. Maybe I will. It looks like Greys has chosen a place. Wait, I will ask.

I said, "Are you sleeping on a board tonight?"

And he said, "I don't think so. We might not need to sleep on them anymore."

And I said, "What should we do with them?"

And he said, "Nothing useless." Or something to that end.

I'm trying to think of what we could do with them, what else we could lash together or make from the planks to help us. I think of pikes or skewers, but there are no fish. Not that we have seen anyway. And no more mud for any mud-worms either.

Do we even have any fishing equipment? I think we left it all on the ship. Our nets were for sardis, and sardis don't live this far down.

Are there any other fish that do live this far down? Do we have hooks or lines? We could make them I am sure, from our ropes. We could twist out some of the twine for the line and then use... something for a hook.

I immediately thought of Shanda's ring, and shook the thought from my head. I would never use that for bait. It may be shiny enough, even down here, to be interesting to a fish, but... are there even fish here? We have not seen any.

We could just use a pointy shiver for some kind of hook.

Am I leading myself on with false hopes? We don't see any fish.

Or maybe the only use left for the anchor-board is to burn it. That would feel nice. Warm. That would look nice too. We would be able to see ourselves a little more clearly, just that much more. Maybe it would shine brighter and farther than our lantern has been able to. Maybe we would see something of interest. Or maybe we would light the fire, and then the rain would come back and immediately douse it.

That would be fun. Once.

More scenarios in my head. Do I ever even write what actually happens? Yes, yes I do, I remember. It just seems like I write so much of what _may_ be, instead of what _is_.

Well, what is?

We are here, in our stone's-cast-world, and the lantern-light makes the moist air fuzzy. It's like walking in a dream. And we have ground to lay on, different shapes we can curve around, and water to drown our hunger. The sky booms and grumbles, and so does my stomach. The rest of everything is dark. We'll take our pocket of existence further up the mountain the next time we wake.

Do you know the song that is in my head? It's Shanda's song.

They've been with us. They've helped us. Dhalan and Shanda. It makes me grateful and sad at the same time. And to remember them all I have is a ring and a cutlass. And my strength. They gave me the strength to make it this far. And Greys too.

I can hear it in my mind, the song, going up and down, and the little trilling parts before the long notes at the ends.

Was she the only one who knew this song? I hope not.

I hum it. I don't want to forget.

What is wrong with me? Do I consider myself so learned? I have knowledge within me, on a wide range of differing subjects of study. I read books every chance I get. Quote me a passage and I'll tell you the author. I have the largest vocabulary of anyone I know. I can read and write and speak Old Valuan fluently. My spelling is always perfect. I can tell you the entire history of the Gigas War. But for the life of me--no... for the life of _her_--I cannot write music.

All the knowledge in the world, and none of it useful for what I ache to be able to do. I am a recorder. I record things. But music is a language I have never studied. I can't record it.

Moons, that makes me sad.

I'm looking at her ring and humming her song. I never wrote much about the ring. The band is silver, and it gets a little bit wider and flatter where the stone is. The stone is red. A moonstone. I suppose that was a good thing for Haley to consider, since Shanda is from the land of the Red Moon. The facets are perfect and even, and the inside looks flawless. It sparkles when I hold it right next to the lantern. It makes little patterns and designs on the supply-board.

I have not written of Dhalan's cutlass either. The blade is curved and tapered, a little longer than my arm. There is an etching near the base of the blade, depressed into the steel. It's a little flame-looking motif that happens again on the hilt. Except on the hilt the motif is colored red. The rest of the hilt is all steel and tightly-wrapped leather.

I have to stop. It's drizzling.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	16. Chapter 16

Thank you so much, Reviewers. And Readers. Yeah, I'm running out of ways to phrase my appreciation...  
This chapter seemed to... Well this is just the way it came out. Enjoy.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirty-Second Waking.

I'm just tired.

I'm tired of all this noise, all the thunder, and I'm tired of climbing, I'm tired of rocks. My legs are tired, my arms are tired, my ears are tired, and I'm hungry. I hate this.

What is it, hand? What are you itching to tell me? To tell anyone? "Greys said think positive"? To Deep Sky with thinking positive! Blast you!

But I _am_ in Deep Sky. Am I? So it's already there, thinking positive is already there. Or _here_. I can't tell.

We felt wind today. That's positive.

Hand, I hate you.

I know.

It made us want to move more, the wind, as if something were waking up inside us. But it also made it colder. It's still breezing, only just slightly. It's like someone is fingering my face. Or like feathers. I blink a lot. My eyes dry out. Before it was so still. But now there is moving air. And sound. Like wind against the edge of land. A whisper.

That must be what it is: wind blowing against the land. I should have known. We had not heard it in so long. Did we forget what it sounded like? It's just...loud.

It's so craggy now. It gets steeper. The rocks are hard. But we find ways around them. There's always a way around the next boulder.

I don't want to do this anymore.

Do you know what we did with part of one of our supply-boards this waking? We lit it on fire, and watched it burn. We had a nice fire. It's dying now. They're just too heavy and useless to drag around with us. So we had a fire. Snug. Warm. In my mud-caked blanket. It felt nice.

I'm just so tired.

So we drag firewood with us. Swell.

But that's fine. Our load will get lighter and lighter.

Maybe it will feel just as heavy, though. Will we get weaker and weaker? No food, just water. We will get weaker and our load will get lighter at the same rate, so that it will always feel like the same heaviness. What a cruel joke. Ha.

The image still burns in my mind. _Burns_ in my mind? Did I just write that? Really? For I was thinking of the fire, and fire does burn. It was... It really was a pretty thing. Like seeing an old friend that you haven't seen in a long time. Did the fire recognize us too? I wonder.

The flames flicked and curled and danced. It made me happy. The thunder didn't seem to like it. The thunder hated us for it. But the fire didn't care. It just kept dancing. It looked almost...spiteful. It danced to spite the thunder and noise. That made me happy.

It's just so noisy and I'm tired of it. I was not well-rested last sleeping. I don't know if I'll be able to sleep much _this_ sleeping either. Or maybe I will. If I'm tired enough. I certainly _feel_ tired enough.

Stupid thunder. Go away! I don't like you anymore. I don't know if I ever liked you. You were novel, for a time. But now we're done with you, _I'm_ done with you. Please go away and stop. I want to sleep.

And a ghostly thought. Maybe it's Haley, and he's still angry at me for taking his book. Is that what is making the sky boom? Is it angry?

And I think to myself, You are going crazy.

And my self thinks back to me, Yes, yes, I know.

And neither I nor my self care about it.

I'm just tired.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	17. Chapter 17

Thank you so much, Reviewers!  
Here's the next installment.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirty-Fourth Waking.

I'm still tired. My right knee is not right.

I didn't mean for it to come out like that, but it did, and it's funny.

I mean I hurt my right knee. This waking.

Yester-waking was too windy and I was too tired to write.

I'm still too tired to write.

And I think to me, Then how come you're writing?

Then I suppose I am _not_ too tired to write. Blasted, blessed log-lust.

There was a lot of wind last waking. It made it cold and it whistled in our ears. There was even a place where it cast dust into our eyes. Dust flying in the air. No more mud for us. We've had our fill.

Nothing happened but wind and thunder and lightning, and I was too tired. So I slept without writing. Oh, and a fire happened. We burned a lot of our wood. It's getting too steep, and there is nothing we can do with it. Nothing but burn it, and that is some comfort. We found a little hollow to shelter it from the wind. We were very warm while we slept.

But this waking I hurt my knee. It's so steep. The rocks, this mountain.

Sometimes I feel as if some cruel godling has placed us on an enchanted, never-ending path, here in our cloud. This would sure be easier if we could see further ahead.

Imagine climbing a tree, blind-folded. You're looking for the branch that has fruit at the end. Well how do you find it? You just feel out and move along the branches, and if you find nothing at the end of a branch, you turn back.

It's been like that a lot. We just can't see. Our paths are uncertain. We choose and we climb. And if the choice works, we choose again from there. And if the choice does not work, we go back down and choose a different way. These rocks are cruel. They won't let us through. Not easily.

I'm tired of rocks, and I'm tired of cloud, and I'm tired of thunder, and I'm tired of lightning. In fact I'm just tired.

Can you tell?

One of our choices didn't work this waking. There was a--it was like a hedge of stone. There was a way to get up on top and past it between two boulders. Or we thought there was. I climbed up and tried it, and then lightning struck up the slope. It was so close I could feel my ribs vibrate with the sound. I could see it through the cloud. It was very close--_too_ close--it was blinding. There was whiteness and noise and shaking and shuddering all in a second and I thought I was going to die. But I didn't.

But I think now I understand what Dhalan meant when he said it made the air...what did he say? The air _tingled?_ Let me look. No, he said it made the air _crack_. Strange. That _is_ what it feels like.

But it scared me bad, and I fell back down to the slab below the two boulders. Greys broke part of my fall, but I landed crooked on my right foot, and my knee felt like it went inside itself. I screamed. Then we both fell down.

It hurt _so bad_. All I could say was "Pull it out! Pull it out!"

And Greys said, "What! What's the matter!"

And I said, "My knee! Pull it out!"

We sorted ourselves out on the ground, and we felt around both of my knees. The right one felt...lumpy in the wrong places to me. Greys said he didn't know anything about bones, or being able to tell if something were broken, or fixing or setting bones that are broken.

Then part of me went crazy and thought with bitter delight, Ah! So he is mortal after all!

I wished Captain Peralta were there. It just _hurt_. Captain Peralta could make healing spells. I only saw him do it once, but I knew he could make them.

But he wasn't there.

I told Greys it felt like my leg was stuck up inside itself, and to pull it out. Actually I think I yelled it at him. He just kept feeling around my knee like it would eventually tell him what to do. It hurt! Didn't he know that? Couldn't he hurry? But he said he didn't want to make it worse. But I didn't want to wait for caution. I yelled for him to hurry and pull it out.

He finally seemed to agree with me. He took my ankle, and I tried to hold on to the ground behind me, and we both pulled away from each other. It made my head spin, it hurt so bad. It felt like something inside going over a hill, but not quite able to reach the crest and fall down the other side, where it felt like it belonged. It hurt a lot, but it didn't come out.

I yelled to stop and Greys thought he'd broken my leg. But I told him to try again. He sat down on the ground with me, took my ankle again, braced one of his feet against my crotch and pulled.

For a second it felt as if my leg were being crushed under something very heavy. My head spun some more and I clenched my jaw. My teeth hurt from clenching them so hard. It just hurt _so bad_. Then whatever it was inside made it to the top of the hill and there was a pop, and my leg straightened out, and it felt like a prickling and a space inside, and it tingled. Then the pain stopped roaring and has been only growling ever since.

We went a little bit further around the side and found another way up past the hedge of rock. It hurt. It felt tender and...kind of crunchy when I walked on it. I couldn't put too much weight on it. But I'm not going to stop here. I want out of the thunder. It makes me mad. Which hurts more? My ears or my knee?

I try to tell myself that my leg is not swelling. Leg, are you swelling?

It's not answering me.

Now I have it close to the fire. Because we have a fire again. The wind wants to kill our fire and the thunder still laughs at us. The villains. I think they hate us. Well I hate them too.

But I'm tired now, so I am going to sleep.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	18. Chapter 18

Reviewers, you are awesome. If you don't know that by now, you are silly. But still awesome nonetheless.  
On with the madness.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirty-Fifth Waking.

We found a pool of rainwater this waking, and filled our skins. And our bellies. That was early. Now I'm by the fire. Greys is gone ahead to look for ways to go.

My knee is sore. It hurts like knives to walk on it. And when the lightning is close it makes it rattle. And all my arms and legs feel like they burn when I move. Does this happen? Is this normal?

What am I saying? None of this is normal. This is very abnormal. Oh what a well-stocked expedition party would not give to be in my place. Except that there is nothing here. But people still like to explore. To say they have been there, for fame and glory. Well _I_ have been there. I mean I have been _here_.

What am I talking about? That was strange. Am I in an enviable position? Maybe part of me wants to be happier than I am. That must be it.

We stopped sooner this waking. This walking. This waking of walking. My leg is killing me. So Greys took the lantern, and he found a Stone that would scratch other stones, and he is gone ahead to negotiate with the Rocks. He is marking a way. An arrow for yes, and an X for no.

This is my fault. How much energy is he expending on my account? I can't go up and down the Rocks, risking wrong choices with them. It hurts too much to walk. So Greys said he would go a short distance ahead to mark where we could go in our next waking.

What if he falls?

I shouldn't think about it. I am sure of him. He is a sure man. He is too cautious, too careful. He'll be all right. He won't do anything stupid either.

It eats me up. He is the one getting lost in the Rocks. But he has a Marking Stone, and that is good. He is making the mistakes now, so that I won't have to make them next waking. I told him no, but he told me yes. And he went. But part of me wants to be grateful. But part of me is afraid to be grateful. Is that part the same part of me that's ashamed?

So many parts. Alone and lonely. Afraid for Greys. Grateful for Greys. Mad at myself. Practical reasoning. Needing to write. Laughing at the dark and noise. Going mad and mad again. Wanting to sleep. Fearing death. Laughing at death. Welcoming death. Going on a picnic with death.

Hello, Death. How are you?

All right, _now_ I am frightening myself. And yet I feel unafraid. It just seemed like it ought to be the right thing to say. Or to write.

But I don't feel afraid. Actually it is something new. Something to wonder about, and that makes me feel alive. Even if the subject is Death. Is it irony? I feel alive talking about Death?

Dear Death,

I have never written you a letter before. I don't know if you can understand me. Are you really an entity that comes and visits people, like in the old myths? Do you really come and take people away? Are the people frightened when they walk away with you? Or are you friendly and kind? Do you wear a black robe and carry a lantern?

What? Are you Greys in disguise? He is carrying a lantern. But no, he does not wear a black robe.

I laugh.

Is this what it is like to go mad? It really isn't all that bad. Kind of sad, but not that bad.

And you can rhyme more.

Maybe bards are mad.

That makes me laugh some more.

Wait, does this make me a bard?

I don't know.

Thunder laughs at my joke.

So what is Death?

Is this the land of the dead? Have we walked through Death's home? But people died around us, so we are alive. For I don't think the dead can die again.

The Underworld must be near to Deep Sky. Are we in the Underworld? Where spirits come to sleep? But we are still living. Are the living allowed to be in the Underworld?

Haven't I written about this before? I think I have. Have I?

I don't know.

But I think I should stop. I'm tired. Moons watch over Greys.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	19. Chapter 19

Thank you so much, Reviewers.  
And sorry if it's ...irksome in any way, but for those of you who missed it, I did mention that the chapters might be getting shorter.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirty-Sixth Waking.

This is our last fire. No more wood.

When I woke up, Greys was back and asleep. He looked tired. So I slept again too. Does that make this the thirty-seventh waking then?

Does it matter?

I wish we could sleep forever. Or is that wishing for death? I'm just tired, and Greys must be more so.

But it was easier-going this waking. We went a long way before we had to guess again, before we had to guess which way to go. The arrows he marked were clear.

Now he is gone again. Marking.

Do his muscles burn as mine? They must. And my stomach feels like a hole. His must be a great empty pit.

He is just so solid and sure, and he is the devil to argue with. He can't do this again. Not again. I won't let him go if he tries again next waking. Is it killing him?

And here I am letting _fear_ kill _me_.

And I feel ashamed. I feel useless, helpless. To myself. To Greys. What am I doing here?

My knee... My leg, it hurts. Is that any excuse? Greys thinks so. He says it won't do me any good if I break my bones from a wrong step in the Rocks.

But I can't let him again. It won't do _him_ any good if he over-exerts himself and becomes too weak to move at all.

Is he trying to prove something? To me? To himself? Does he still feel guilty? The need to atone for something? Is that why he helps me so? So many deaths were not his fault!

I sit.

And even in the booming and whistling, it seems quiet. Because he is gone away.

I don't like the lack of his company. It's so lonely. It makes me crazy and I write strange things. I couldn't stand it yester-waking. He can't do it again.

The thought tickles my pen: what if he dies?

I shake my head. I can't think about it. Not right now.

There is nothing else to say. I stop.

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro _


	20. Chapter 20

Thank you, Reviewers. You are amazingly cool.  
Next.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Thirty-Seventh Waking?

I'm not sure. I just need to write. Did I nap? Did I sleep deep? _Was_ it a sleeping? A full sleeping? Or not?

Greys is still gone. The fire is still here. Embers, but still here. Dark and hard to write. Did I sleep for long?

Shivers I don't know what to do! _Blasted sun!_ Where are you so that we may tell the time, so that we may measure! What! Why have you left us!

My hands are cold. I usually write at the end of the waking, when they feel fat, swollen with blood from walking.

Where is Greys and what do I do?

Be still, my heart, I cannot waste your energy on phantoms, on imagined trials. The real ones are strenuous enough.

It still hammers like a thing possessed. It makes me want to run. To move. It makes it feel unsafe here. I shake.

Greys where are you?

I look at the fire. It is not... too burned down, is it? Yes, it is. Only glowing embers in the ash. How long was I asleep?

Calm myself, calm myself. I breathe, I breathe. Is it too fast? Do it slower. In... in... in... and... out. Slower. My heart. Stop pounding so hard.

Think, _think_, curse you, leave the work to your head, let your limbs rest.

Write it.

I know.

Greys is gone, and I am here.

Good, calm. Write more.

What choices have I?

Greys would not go down. He would only go up. We have been going only upward for this whole time, for ever. Only up. So one direction, two choices. Stay or move.

If I stay, Greys may come back and find me.

If I move, I may find Greys.

Can I see his markings?

_May_, _may_. Such precariousness. Wait.

Now my voice is hoarse. I called his name, but I cannot best the Thunder. It conspires with the Rocks to kill us.

No! Think clearly, confound you! They are stone, _stone!_ Stone and noise. They cannot come after me. Except the Lightning. But the Lightning prefers the great bald crags in whose lees we tread.

Or is this a canyon?

But I imagine them as great heaving mounds of Rock. Single mounds like bulkish spires.

A stone's cast. A stone's cast. Why can't I see Greys? Curse this mist and fog and cloud.

I am afraid. I don't want to end. This entry cannot end.

Quiet down, my heart, I am still here.

Slowly. Slowly. Please. I cannot bear it.

Why did I wake up?

Stop. Breathe. Slowly. Calm. Calm.

Please...


	21. Chapter 21

Reviewers, you rock, as always.  
Sorry for the delay. My mother got bit by the IKEA-bug, and my house subsequently exploded in a flurry of remodeling. That, and Zelda is still eating my soul.  
Happy New Year!

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

Is it the same waking?

I don't know. It feels like a million wakings from now.

But time moves slower. Because I am frightened. Has it been only a few moments? An hour? A day?

It's still so dark and I can't tell. I can't tell. No sun. No light. No time.

My heart stopped hammering, but it is not calmer. But I try to breathe slow. I can't waste my energy. Greys would not like it.

Where is he?

There is nothing here, only me and you. I wish you could tell me where he is, where he went. Speak to me from the future, whoever you are. Where is my friend?

But there is nothing else here. And I cannot sit still. I had put my book away, but I take it up again and write. Because there is nothing else. Nothing else.

Writing. How much time can I make pass by writing?

Not enough, never enough. Would I could span this gap.

I cannot do nothing and I cannot do something! It makes me mad!

Waiting drives me mad because it is a pit of uncertainty! I drown.

Writing drives me mad because the pit of uncertainty is the only thing to write about! Nothing else! Nothing!

Ah, but writing about bad things is better than not writing about them.

No! But I have already written about it! You already know about it!

Then write something else.

There is nothing else. My thoughts are full and awash. Over the brim: Where is Greys?

_Make_ yourself write something else.

It would be a lie. It would betray what is in my head.

If it is madness to stay, then I should move.

Not far. You'll get lost.

I can't get lost. Then there would be two of us lost. That's all of us lost. No more after Greys and I. Except for you.

But aren't we all lost already?

The Lost of Lost, is that where he has gone?

I won't go far.


	22. Chapter 22

Thank you so much, Reviewers.  
I should have posted this a long time ago. Please don't kill me.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

I come back, and I am tired.

Did I look long? I can't tell anymore.

Did I look long _enough?_

Can I ever?

Is it still the same--what waking is it? I can't remember.

When did I last write it? I look.

Thirty-Seven. That was my last number. Is it still the thirty-seventh waking?

_Think_, blast you...

I am troubled, that is all, and troubling makes the time go slower.

But I argue with myself: it feels like there must be at least a day and a half gone past by now.

But maybe Greys has not been gone very long at all, and it has only _felt_ long. Because of being troubled and nervous.

But the fire. Look at the fire. It is long dead. The embers dim and extinguish themselves.

But how long could it take a fire to die? Especially in this hell-hole.

Thunder... Lightning and Thunder! _Haley!_ Give me back my other friend! _Our_ other friend! _I tried to save you! _I tried to...

I tried to... I tried...

_Blast me, curse me to death in the muds_, I can't stop thinking. I can't stop. I...

Ah, I bend my leg. It crunches itself. Other thoughts for me: pain. It blots out thoughts of poison and fear.

I climbed.

I looked. I moved and I looked.

I couldn't go far. I couldn't. I dared not. Not far enough to lose myself. And it hurt.

The mist and cloud and fog. The Rocks. The _Thunder_.

They made it dizzying, frightening. It is all frightening. Even with nothing to be afraid of. Frightening. But I studied the Rocks. I felt them. I went by them. Again and again. Different paths. And I always came back to my rucksack, my blanket. Dhalan's cutlass.

The blade gives the faintest of glimmers, the sickly light piercing the dead mist as the blade itself was made to pierce flesh. It made sure I came back, every time.

But did I go far enough? Did I look hard enough? Did I scream loud enough?

So many questions. All in the past. Could-haves and should-haves and Rocks.

The Rocks helped me. They showed me the ways.

In the Mud there were no ways. But the Rocks make the land into shapes that we can see and feel and recognize.

I should be grateful for the Rocks, as I was at first.

But Greys is still not here.

And I have stayed.

I have stayed and waited.

I have stayed and thought.

I have stayed and written.

And I have moved.

I have moved and looked, as far as I dared.

And there is nothing else to do.

There is nothing else I _can_ do.

My leg. It aches. It stabs and throbs.

I can do no more.

I will stay again, and wait.

I will make you leave me alone. And I will leave you alone.

I said I have written.

There is no more to write about.

So for now, I stop.

If there is more, then I will write in you again.

But for now, I lay you aside.

And so I will stay

and wait.

Moons watch over us. Bring Greys back.

My mantra

Dear family, in case I die, finish my story. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	23. Chapter 23

Those darn Comicons, they just sneak up on ya. Sorry I'm slow! Work has been a _beast_ lately...  
Thank you Reviewers!

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

Same Waking.

Lantern light, he comes.

Can't write now. I speak with him.

Finish if I die.

_Alex_


	24. Chapter 24

Thanks as always, awesome Reviewers. Sorry I'm so slow. Work is killer this time of year, and I have no more cubicle-time to spare for writing, so I have to fight my brothers for the home computer. I'm hoping work calms down soon... it will...  
Relik I know this is torture... just bear with me another chapter...

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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It is still the same.

Same waking.

I must be dreaming on my feet.

Not him, no lantern.

I can't do this.

I need to stop. How long have I been awake?

I feel it in my eyes. My limbs, my head, my stomach. Empty. And my gums hurt. They feel tender.

I have some water left.

I drink a little.

Does it help?

I can't do this. I was so sure. I could hear the lantern clinking, I could see the fog lighting up.

Am I awake? Or am I dreaming?

Am I dead yet?

It just feels so hard to tell.

Oh de

-

So much for that pen. It's empty.

Do I throw it away?

I'm empty.

Do I throw _me_ away?

My pens are sharp, like they could puncture flesh... But Dhalan's cutlass would be easy enough. That would be... I couldn't. No. Nevermind.

I'm hungry.

Maybe I should drink the rest of my water, make my belly think it's been fed, then just go to sleep and die.

Maybe that's what Greys did.

No, if I drink the rest of my water, nurture me further, it would only prolong this... I could just stop, set it aside, save it for in case another unlucky soul crashes here, and he can find it, and live. He'll come upon my skeleton in a hundred years and find my water and my journal. Maybe just my journal.

Are you the one reading my book? I mean Haley's Book?

What is your name?

Oh, but I can't hear you speak, can I?

Then I will call you Paco.

I had a dog once. His name was Rojo, and he only had one eye. I wrote a lot about him in a journal with feathery decorations on the spine. It was a long time ago. But I wrote about him before.

Rojo died and we buried him in the back of my mother's garden. But I wanted another dog, and when I got another dog, I wanted to name him Paco. But I never got another dog.

So you get to be Paco.

Ha, ha, watch me go insane.

Paco because I can't call you Elena. Because Elena will never read this.

Elena will never read this.

Elena will never read this.

Don't write it down! It has more power if you do.

I don't care. I can't care. I'm too tired. Am I dead yet?

You do care.

Yes, I do.

I am crying.

Greys said save my tears.

I can't help it.

Not really tears anyway.

None left to spill.

I don't want to.

I'm afraid to sleep.

-

Like a heaviness.

Frozen and breaking and frozen.


	25. Chapter 25

Thank you reviewers! And wow, Marti, thanks for the review-blitz!  
Sorry I'm slow, everybody. Enjoy chapter twenty-five.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Waking I Don't Know.

I'm still here.

I didn't mean to sleep.

-

I don't think Greys is coming back.

-

_Oh Moons_...

-

I climbed a little. It hurt. Too heavy on my knee. Felt crunchy.

Too much to carry, too much to drag.

When I move, everything burns, my body doesn't like it. Wants to sleep.

But I found some marks. Found a few marks that... he left. And marks of ways not to go.

They guided me and I followed them up.

-

I couldn't go very far.

-

My stomach growls, has nothing to chew on but itself. Just burning all over inside.

Everything feels weak. Makes my arms and legs feel weak.

Everything's too heavy and I just want to sleep.

It's all right for dozing, moments between the claps and rolls of the Thunder. I almost don't hear it anymore.

-

My gums still hurt. Am I going to catch the scurvy and die?

Which will get me first? Scurvy or starvation?

-

I wish I could see Elena again. Eat an orange for me, Elena. Or Paco.

Toss me a section.

Because I'm so hungry.

-

-

I don't think I'm going to make it out of this.

-

-

I'm sorry.

-

I'm so sorry.

-

I--

-

-

I can't be afraid anymore.

My hand got tired of writing. So I read the whole thing over, read my whole journal, right here, just now. I didn't realize my writing had changed so much. My writing is only my thoughts. Maybe my thoughts were what really changed. So if my thoughts changed... and our thoughts are what make us... does that mean I as a person have changed? For better or worse I don't know, but I think I have. Even if in nothing more than that I used to have such a hard time reading in the dark. I think my eyes are adjusting to it. It seems easier.

The pages are so wide and light. Haley must have been itching to use this book. When I read it over, I realized I never told you, Haley was not much given to writing, not like I am. Haley drew pictures. This was going to be his next sketchbook. I did write that Haley couldn't sleep at night because he was too preoccupied sketching Shanda's face. But I didn't say that it was what he did, that it was his hobby, his thing. To draw. He was very good, very skilled.

Haley--

-

Wind. And the Thunder stills. Quiet. Eerie.

I can't be afraid anymore.

When I read what Greys wrote, I just--

Something Greys said...

It makes me... I feel...

-

I will not be afraid any longer. I will not be shamed.

Whoever you are, even if you are _Nobody_, even if _no one_ ever sees this writing, it is still here, it still exists. And it is flawed. There is a wrong I must set right. It shames me. It has shamed me for a long time.

I lied. In my writing, in _my very journal_, I lied. It is something I have never done before, and now having experienced it, all its shame and anguish, it is something I will never do again for as long as I live. How ironic, for it may not be that long. I am a coward. But I will be an honest coward here at the last.

I should have died with Haley. When the mast went down. In all the storm and shivers.

I wrote that Haley saved me, that he protected me.

He didn't.

When the shivers flew, Haley did not move. I did. I moved behind him.

Yes, I am a coward! Yes, I am the lowest form of keel-scum, festering in its own rot of fear and lies! Yes, I ran and fled from danger and death and left my friend in the face of it! Yes, I admit it! I admit it. I open myself up and lay everything bare: I lived and Haley died because I was a coward. And I face your judgments, what you may think of me. I face them all. Were I to live, to be rescued, and then sentenced to torture and death for my cowardice, I would face it. For I will not take this secret to my grave. I will not be shamed with lies beyond my death.

Yes, I am a coward. I will be a coward forever.

But I will be an honest coward.

-

My only hope is that honesty be higher than bravery.

-

The Thunder returns.

Everything's a dream now.

-

I had thought it would be better to lift him up above me with a lie, than to lower myself down below him with the truth. Either way, I would end up on the bottom. I would end up the lesser.

And I am.

And I face it.

I accept it.

-

I am here, at the bottom of the world, and I accept it.

I am alone, and all those dear to me far away or dead.

But my conscience is clear.

And it pains me.

But it is clear, it is clear.

And I can breathe, and I am finally free.

The burden is gone.

And that is enough.

-

If I do not write more, finish it for me, finish the story, whatever it be that happens to me.

But for now I think this is it. I'm saying good-bye.

Because now I've said all that needs to be said.

And that's all.

-

Dearest Elena, if somewhere beyond I should see Mom and Dad...

I'll give them your love.

Moons watch over you and Diego always.

Love you, big sister.

_Alexandro _


	26. Chapter 26

Yes, I know! False alarm! Sorry! This blasted chapter is giving me conniptions.  
Many thanks to you Readers and Reviewers! _Haley's Book_ just passed the thousand-hit mark. Thanks again for another blitz, Marti!  
Dude, if my place of employment paid me by the keystroke... I'd be makin' a million dollars. But I haven't hit carpal-tunnel as of yet, so here's twenty-six. Enjoy!  
If you need me I'll be inspecting the insides of my eyelids.

**Rated T** - The following chapter contains passages which may be disturbing to younger or sensitive readers. Reader discretion is advised.  
**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

Waking... I still don't know. Don't care anymore. Doesn't matter really.

Maybe it does. Let me look. The last waking I wrote was thirty-seven. And I have slept once since those entries. So this is thirty-eight. But thirty-seven was too long, seemed like days...

It doesn't matter. I can let it go. I obsess over it too much. I can't obsess anymore; there are other things yet to write.

I had a dream. It was my first dream with Haley as he used to be, not broken and bleeding like in nightmares.

I was back on Naranja, and he and I were picking oranges. But when we put them in our baskets, they turned into mud-worms and disappeared. Captain Peralta--he was Uncle Sal--was waiting at the house. We had to gather food, but we couldn't hold on to it. We were tired.

We walked deeper into the orange grove, and it became a huge jungle. We dropped our baskets and just walked. The sky and the ground got darker, and then we were in a big valley, like the kind there must be far inland on the mainlands. Shanda's voice floated on the air; she sang her song.

There were no more trees, and a lot more people. Everyone was walking in lines, following each other on a very long path that stretched all the way to the horizon before it doubled back. It zig-zagged infinitely across the plain. The people walked slowly, looking at the ground. There were depressions in the ground on either side of the path; holes shaped like bodies, like people. Everywhere. You had to walk the path until you found the depression that fit you exactly, and then you lay down in it.

Some already had people in them. They looked like they were sleeping. Or maybe just resting. Some looked up at the sky... Sometimes I would see someone in the line slow down, stop, get off the path, and lie down in his own depression. But the rest of us had to keep going; the line pressed from behind.

Haley walked beside me. The farther we walked, the fainter Shanda's song became, until we could barely hear it at all. When we couldn't hear it anymore, we came upon Haley's place, and he had to stop and lie down, and I had to keep going.

He looked peaceful as I left him.

It was life. And it was death. You live and you live, and when your time comes, you die, and the world moves on. Sometimes you leave your friends behind. Sometimes they leave you behind. But the line has to keep going, the world has to keep moving. And if friends go to lay themselves down and one is left standing alone without his place, all he can do is keep moving forward. His own place may come after the next turn, or he may not find it for miles and miles. But eventually he does find it, and he can lie down and rest... and see the stars in the heavens. His place may be close among those he loves, or it may be far removed from anything familiar. But in the end, everyone's rest would be in the same sweet, dark valley. And in that knowledge, there was some comfort.

Even lost, I am still here, a part of this world. I am still an Arcadian. The same sky arcs over us all.

In my dream, I didn't know where my own place was, or when I would come upon it. The line was sparse around me. But I couldn't lie down yet--I realized I didn't have my journal with me. I wanted my journal, but I had left it back at the house, back on Naranja.

I wanted it bad. I needed my journal. There was no getting out of the line, no cutting backwards. But I couldn't go on without it, so I stopped. The man in front of me came back and put an arm around my shoulders. He said, "Come on," and tried to pull me forward. But I didn't want to. He pulled me harder. "Come on, Mr. Reyes." Then he shook me a little and my boots began to skid along the path. But I couldn't go, not yet. I didn't have my journal. I _needed_ it. He yelled at me, "_Rey!_" And then I knew his voice. It was Greys.

Then I came to and Greys was shaking me. He said, "Come on Rey... wake up, stay with me now!" He sounded panicked. I'd never heard him sound panicked before. Ever.

I groaned and opened my eyes a crack. I was on my back, and he had me propped up with one of his arms underneath my shoulders. _He_ was the one who had been calling my name.

My mind was still asleep. I said, "You stole me from the line."

Then when he saw me awake he stopped shaking me and cried, "_Moons I thought you were dead!_" Then he broke down over me and wept.

I let him. It was all I _could_ do; I was too stunned to do anything else. I couldn't believe it. It was Greys, he was real, he was here, he _is_ here. He is here, alive, _Moons be praised_... I wept too. I couldn't believe it, but it was true, it was real. He was here, he came back. I could only say, "_Mr. Greys_... _Mr. Greys_..." and he could only weep and hold me.

I think... I understand.

-

When he came, he was out of water; I gave him some of mine.

I hadn't eaten in... I don't know how many wakings.

Do I want to know? No, I do not care.

I gave him some of my water, and he gave me part of a dead fish. Some stony-looking, bottom-feeding thing with whiskers. He found it up the mountain. A good fish. More vertical-flat, less horizontal-flat. Not a mud-worm. A real fish. It filled my belly and gave strength to my heart.

There are fish again. Satisfying even in their oily rawness. Greys has found them. They are there, up the slope.

But poor Greys... he is... out of sorts. He's gone to sleep for now.

He told me everything that happened. He went and marked and marked and marked until he found something, a scrubby moss-plant thing, he said.

Greys did count the wakings between food. For him he said it was five.

_Five_. And my wait was longer? But I flinch at feeling pity for myself; his lot seems the worse.

He said he tried some of the moss, ripped it up and ate it. But it made him sick. So sick he couldn't move, he couldn't come back down. He said he didn't know how long he was there, just that it made him very nauseous, that it felt like a nightmare, like a terrible monster eating him up inside, and all he could do was lie there in the crook of a rock.

It is so strange. Until now he has seemed... as something greater. A greater man than I could ever be. But seeing him weep, seeing him bend with leftover pains... hearing him tell me these things, it doesn't seem real.

I know he is human, he is mortal, he is only a man, susceptible to pain, not immune to fear. But witnessing these things upon him feels so... hard.

He is still sleeping, there in his blanket.

It feels strange to be... for _me_ to be looking after _him_.

He told me he could only wait it out as he lay there. That was when he drank the rest of his water. Then when the pains went away, he slept the rest of it off.

His fingers woke him up, he said. A whiskery fish was nibbling at them. He tried to grab it, but it got away. There was a small school of them around the rocks where he was. When Greys saw them he said he could think only of obtaining food. Until he thought of me. He didn't know how long he had been away. And then he could only think of getting food for _me_.

-

Even in the darkness, I could see his sincerity. Feel it almost.

And it feels... too great for me to bear.

How can he be, this man?

-

He saw that the school of whiskery fish seemed to be grazing on some of the plant-matter on the rocks. He had nothing to fish with. He only had the lantern, a bit of rope, some moonstone fragments, his jacket... not much. And he didn't dare use any of the shot he had left for his pistol.

I still don't understand the moss-luring method he devised and described to me, but he said that when a big one came in close enough he was able to finally sort of pin it against the rock using one of the sharper moonstone fragments. It was enough. But to actually kill it he could only beat it to death.

Maybe I should have lent him Dhalan's cutlass.

It doesn't matter now.

He drank its blood, and came down the mountain. But it was slower going--he still felt sick from the poison.

But when he came back... oh Moons I have never been so happy to see anyone in my life. Blast it, I must have been so cruel to him--I should have let him rest. I made him relate everything to me, for the pen, for the paper. For the stupid _log_.

He told me he didn't think I needed such a tome.

I told him I want to remember. And... to be remembered.

He told me he was glad at least that it wasn't _me_ that got poisoned, that it was him that tried it first.

I told him he was a fool.

He gave a soft laugh and agreed, and went to sleep.

That is how he is now, curled on his side there, like a child sleeps.

I think I understand now... who the leaders look to.

Anyone they can.

-

It is a strange feeling, a welcome one. I feel as if... hope has returned to me. I am so blest to have my friend here with me. I am not alone in this my pocket of ground and cloud and noise. Here on the lowliest scrape of the world, nigh to the Land of the Dead, where there is nothing left to hold on to, we have each the other.

Going somewhere unfamiliar, even to death if that be your lot, is not so bad if you know you are not going alone.

I do not care what comes after this. For my friend is here with me. And that calms my heart. Calms me down like going to sleep, like the smell of Naranja when the trees are in blossom... There is a comfort here now, even... a happiness. And I will cherish it.

I will not die despairing.

And that gives me peace.

Know I love you, dear family. If I do not write more, finish for me.

_Alexandro_


	27. Chapter 27

Good news, work's calming down a smidge. (Knock on wood.)  
Thanks Reviewers! As always, you are the awesomest people alive.  
Here's twenty-seven.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

Thirty-ninth time that I've been awake, give some or take.

It is dark.

We climbed. I'm tired. I'm still sore and I hurt all over, but we went a long way.

My gums still hurt.

This is ridiculous. Greys left marks everywhere. _Everywhere!_ If I had the strength to spare, it would make me angry that I couldn't see them when he was gone away and sick. I might have been able to find him.

But they're just so hard to see in the darkness, and I had no lantern of my own. By some miracle, I did see a few of his earlier marks, lower down, when I climbed by myself. But after a while... and I didn't see them anymore... They must only have blended into the color of the Rocks. He put them everywhere, but they were invisible in the darkness. Dirty-beige-on-brown, _blast it_...

All of a sudden I am so very grateful that black ink on white paper contrasts so much better. I was still able to write. And that is good.

And I can still write now.

I'm just--it's still dark...

No, I said I would not despair, but it just makes me so sad.

Our lantern broke.

It was... No, I will not say.

-

I had been alone in the darkness for so long, but then Greys came back. He came and he brought light with him! _Light!_ I had missed it. And now, so soon after seeing it again, our lantern...

But I can still write, I can _still write_... And that is good.

I said that.

-

We lost the lantern at a steep place. It just hurt too much--my knee--it hurt to climb up myself. So Greys helped me with the rope. That's where the lantern fell. It cracked on the rocks below, the light went out, and it tumbled down the slope. We heard it rolling and bouncing and crashing for a long time, and it was too far--we didn't want to go after it. We were sure that, even if we did, there would be nothing to salvage. Threw it down the stairs. A big staircase.

So now, it's dark.

We kept going. Greys remembered where to go for the most part, but--ah it just makes me so angry! And angry at myself! At my stupid knee! It hurts to move! It hurts a lot! And I hate walking around these pointless crags, looking for ways up! Running into dead ends! Coming back round, climbing into box-alcoves! I hate it!

I just--

-

It _was_ easier when Greys would mark the paths for us, for me.

But we're not going to leave each other again. I just... I need to just...

suck it up.

Why can't I just take it? It's only pain, a physical thing. It isn't death, it isn't hunger--as a matter of fact, it may even keep my mind _off_ being hungry.

We'll climb together, right ways or wrong.

Oh, saying that makes me feel horrible inside. I hate moving.

But I have to keep--I just have to remember and think: Which do I hate more? The pain of moving around? Or the thought of staying here in this--

That was scary. Close thunder. I hadn't heard it in--

_Holy daylights_... Wait.

I asked Greys when the last time we heard thunder was, besides that last one. He guessed maybe a quarter of an hour ago? Half an hour? Has it been that long?

This is--that's... That's good, isn't it?

It's--I didn't even--man alive, can I not _think?_

This gives me something else to go on. A moment ago I could think only of my hatred of this darkness. It seemed more than sufficient motivation to keep me going. But now this... is there a place of silence before us? If we could just reach a place out of the noise... That would--that _is_ something else to go on. Something to _reach for_, not something to flee from. Ah, it's in my head now. Burning in my brain.

-

Something else.

-

We are at the place with poisoned moss. And the whiskery fish are here, somewhere. But I can't see them as Greys saw them. We have no light.

I was going to write that it makes me happy to see fish, but... I can't see them that well. For me they are only dim outlines against the dark. Maybe it's better that I can't see them. Ha! I can't see what I eat. I suppose that's good. It must look absolutely revolting.

For we did have fish again. Together we caught two more. We made a drapery of moss, and put it over my head and back and arms. I laid very still in the rest of the moss with Dhalan's cutlass at the ready. Greys controlled the lure: it was the tiniest, shiniest moonstone fragment we could scrounge, held by a length of twine from the rope. He stayed out of sight a little upslope from me, and tugged it around and pulled it along. When a fish became too curious, he would pull the lure past me, and I would kill the fish with the cutlass as it passed.

Greys was happy for the ease of our catch. He said it worked much better than the pointy moonstone he had used before.

Maybe it was easy for _him_. I'm still not very used to a cutlass. I didn't trust my aim enough to _stab_ the fish... and it turns out whiskery fish-halves are hard to hold on to. A lot of blood spilled before we could catch it. A skewer would have been much easier... Stupid... Now I wish we hadn't burned all our wood.

I can't dwell on it--we couldn't have known. And we do have food. And that makes me feel... better. I didn't realize how much of a shadow I had become, going without food for so long. Eating again, having food again feels like waking up, like my body coming out of a deep dormancy.

Still... I wish we had a way to cook it. Haven't had a warm meal in so long...

I shouldn't complain. Food is good. But the water's gone again, and now it's blood for us. I hate it. There wasn't much from the two whiskery fish, but Greys and I shared what little we could get in the small pot. I had been hoping it would taste better than mud-worm blood. It didn't.

But at least we have it.

I feel so... confusedly torn. So much to hate, so much to love, and I in between. It seems impossible. Are we really alive? Or dreaming ghosts? We've been clinging from point to point, impossible chances, unexpected sustenance. No water, we drink blood. No blood, we conjure meat. No meat, we collect rain. No rain, we find fish.

Can one live down here?

NO! Never! No one could live here!

No, I'm sorry... Not here.

I feel strange.

I'm sorry.

-

I think... I just need to rest.

The moss feels soft. I want to dream about the grass on Naranja.

Dearest family, if I write no more, finish it for me.

_Alexandro_


	28. Chapter 28

Dear Reviewers: You rock. Thank you for all your support.  
Here's twenty-eight.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Fortieth Waking.

Forty... How many days is that? I wish we could see the sky. Have the sun to tell us when to be awake. It always feels like our wakings are longer than normal days. Sometimes.

My stomach hurts.

We climbed very, _very_ far this waking. There's a little more moss, but not much. No fish. But we have a little wind. It's still blowing.

Paco, Elena, whoever you are, know this: I am happy. I am happy beyond happy. We only heard six rolls of thunder this waking. And right now I can turn my head in all directions, strain my ears, and I only hear the whisper of the wind.

The air gusts around us. Wind, take the storm away! No more Thunderings, no more Lightnings, no more shaking in the dark, rattling in my bones. I can listen now and hear nothing. And nothing is a beautiful sound to listen to. It will lull me to sleep any minute now, I know it.

Oh my, now it really is gusting. Sort of cold.

The wind makes our world a little bigger, blows the fog around. The horizon seems a few paces farther off. The mist still shrouds us, but no longer in a choke-hold.

I'm sure our little world would seem even bigger if we had the lantern to pierce through the fog.

I was so angry last waking. I could have... I really felt like hurting something. Because of the lost light. I didn't like it. I felt cheated. I still feel cheated. But... I think it's okay, we'll be fine. Greys is here. We can weather the darkness together. It's only darkness, nothing to be afraid of. But somehow it still scares me. It feels like it's always scared me.

Hasn't it driven me crazy yet?

Sometimes I wonder if I would be as... _all-right_ as I am now if I didn't have this book. I keep writing to myself that it's only darkness, it's only noise, it's only wind, it's only cold and mud, rocks and crags. I keep writing that there is nothing to be afraid of. Because writing something down gives that thing power, makes it more true.

But now with the lantern gone, this darkness, this shadow seems to seep ever deeper into my core. Like a poison. Before, I felt like we could fend it off with the lantern. But now we have no more light, nothing to fight against the darkness.

It just wears down on my heart.

And I wish I could see Shanda's ring more clearly. It used to sparkle in the light.

-

But Greys is here; we'll be fine. I'm together with my friend, and his company is the greatest blessing of all. I shouldn't be ungrateful for what I do have.

Blasted fate and irony! SHUT UP! Now that makes it seven. Come to torment me just when I resign myself to some sickly form of happiness. Seven rolls of thunder this waking.

It makes my head hurt, it aggravates my stomach-ache... It's like it knows. It knows I don't like the dark.

No, no, no... I'm not thinking clearly.

It's just... I must be too tired.

But why won't it _go_ away and _stay_ away? I can't listen to it anymore! It makes me mad and drives me to _tears!_ I can't hear _one more clap_ of it! I thought we were _out_ of it! Do you know how many times it has woken me from sleep? _Do you?_ And how many times it has _not_ woken me from sleep, but crept into my dreams, twisted them into _nightmares?_ Nightmares where all I could hear were the cannons of the pirates, killing us from the skies and airs, shooting us from the clouds above.

I hate the Thunder. _I hate it!_ I despise it more than any other sound in the world. All it is is bad memories. Terrible things that should never have been. It's brought me nothing but sorrow, no matter where I am.

-

It was thundering when uncle Sal told us mom and dad had died.

And my cousin Josephine came and hugged me.

Moons my _parents_...

-

Greys just asked me if I'm all right. He's looking at me.

Now he knows what I'm writing. I'm sure of it.

He waits? My move? Fine, First Mate Mr. Greys. I say, "No."

He asked, "Why not?" And now he's waiting for me to finish writing. He knows I'm recording the conversation. _Wise old_... I don't care.

I say, "I hate the Thunder."

-

I'm sorry.

I read somewhere that the end of anger is sadness. It really is.

I'm done now, I'll be all right. There is thunder everywhere. Not just in Deep Sky. I'll be fine with it. There is nothing else for it. We can't control it, it will go where it will. And we can only go about our own things.

-

Oh my stomach hurts the more.

-

Greys told me "Think of something positive instead."

"_Think positive_."

I'd forgotten.

-

I'll be all right.

I told myself I would not despair.

And I say it again:

_I will not despair_.

We still have each other.

And that is enough.

-

These pangs... I should sleep. This waking has gone on long enough.

Dear family, if I should die, write what becomes of me. I love you.

_Alexandro_


	29. Chapter 29

Thank you so much Reviewers!  
If you've never heard Samuel Barber's _Adagio for Strings_... dude, you're missing out and that's all there is to it.  
On we go, then...

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

Waking 41.

I think it's still a sleeping. Or supposed to be. Greys is still asleep.

My stomach woke me up; it still aches.

The wind has stilled and the air is pink.

I can see an edge, like a horizon. It doesn't look very far away. I'm just going to look.

I'll take you with me.

-

-

Nothing.

-

_Thunder_, no...

Rumbling in the dark all around me.

-

Only darkness, _only darkness?_

-

No, no, no, why darkness? _Why?_ Why all things leaving me here to die? I can't do this anymore! Where is my Sun? Where is my _Sky!_ My sky, my sky... _Why does it abandon me?_

I can't be in the dark anymore, I can't, I can't... _Why did this happen to us?_

_I can't_.

-

Oh my stomach hurts.

And my _head_...

-

Did I imagine it?

_Terrifying_.

Fear strikes me: am I really going crazy? The things I see, are none of them real? The time I thought Greys came back, but he didn't. The light, like fire in the sky, but it left me; my eyes, my _very eyes lied to me!_ Like they did before. Do they think it a cruel _game?_ Did I _imagine it all?_

And Greys... This fear is too deep, twists a knot in my gut.

_Greys?_ Did Greys really come back? Moons am I imagining _him too? _

I can't move. _Fire and death, I cry_.

-

Write... hand. _Something_.

-

Stop. _Stop_. _Wait_. Stay here. _Here_ and _now_, _think_, curse you...

_Hold on_. _Please_.

No, no he fed me fish, he fed me.

But I'm still hungry.

NO! But he fed me, _blast it!_ He's _real!_ He _must_ be!

He must be...

_He must be_...

Everything breaks down.

My _knee_... it hurts. Lying down. I just _hurt_... _Hurts so much_. _My stomach_.

There's nothing. _Nothing, nothing, nothing_...

_Nothing_.

_Nothing_.

Everything's gone.

-

No, the _Thunder_. It's here, it... comes to kill me. It will consume me.

-

_Oh I hurt_.

-

Only thing here. Just the Thunder and I. I wish it would take me quickly. Take me now. I can't hurt anymore.

We should all have died from the beginning. Captain Peralta, Haley... Theirs was the better lot, the easier way.

I survived and escaped death.

But they had the _real_ escape. No arduous... _existence_. They were set _free_.

Not left in the Nothing.

With nothing left.

Nothing left.

Noth

-

My hands... My page and pen.

-

-

She's _here_.

-

-

She's here for _me_.


	30. Chapter 30

Thank you so much Reviewers! You're so kind and patient to put up with all the crap what goes on in this story.  
Now I'll admit, most of the time I'll just procrastinate before writing a chapter and sticking it up, but _this one_... I had a good, long, eh, series of altercations with this one before I deemed it ready for posting, so I hope you all enjoy!  
Chapter Thirty...

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

My Forty-Second Waking.

Greys says I have a fever. He doesn't want me exerting myself too much, even just in writing.

When I woke up, he had already found me, and wrapped me up in his blanket. Must have heard me screaming, going crazy up here.

No, I'm not crazy. I'm still here. All here. My stomach feels a little better, but... not much, really.

Did I faint again? I don't know.

But She is with me still.

There _was_ an edge, like an ending, and I _did_ find it. And when I came up it was as though I had entered into another world. The winds gusted once more, the horizon fled from before me, and I could _see_. It looked like I was standing on the jagged lip of a giant bowl. For leagues I laid eyes on an undulating fire, a high vaporous plain of upside-down hillocks and banks, mirrored below by a vast roiling softness, dim and asleep, the endless horizons between them casting out long arms and spears of living light around the edge of the disc. It was _light_, it was _color_. I know it was. I can remember color, like in the fires we had on the slope, or in the lanterns we had in the ship, so precious a thing.

And then, even as my eyes took it in, the light died. It was extinguished in a heartbeat, and the darkness swallowed me up. The mist blew over and clouded my sight. I thought it was Death, from Heaven to Hell in the blink of an eye. But I was still alive. I'm still alive now.

It felt hard, and strange, and cruel, as if my mind were only tricking me. Like the promise of drink to one dying of thirst, or a letter of pardon to one condemned to death. Salvation dangling before my eyes, and then blown away on the wind. It was unbearable, insufferable. Thinking my mind was lying to me. Like I couldn't trust myself.

And then the Thunder rolled. I could feel it in my bones and in my gut. It boomed as if to tell me I were a fool. Lost and alone, and I should have just died from the first. Despair welled up inside me like a monster. I tried to pour the brimming venom out through my pen, onto the page; some words found their way... But I felt as if I would never be able to expel it all, that no words in any tongue could suffice, that the torrent would ravage my insides until I would simply burst and die.

In an evil way I relished the idea, I wanted it. There was nowhere else to go, and I ached for the Lightning to come and blast me to ashes. No more shadows, no more pain.

Until then it had always been a stronger part of me that didn't want to give up, the instinctual part that never wants to die. But last night it was a hard thing to grapple with.

I wish never to visit those feelings again.

I scrawled on the page on my hands and knees until I almost wore a hole in the paper. I didn't want to go crazy. I didn't know what was real or what I could trust.

I know I can trust Mr. Greys. I can always trust him. Forever.

But I didn't know if even _he_ were still real. I just knelt there, pen-to-paper, and considered. Everything was bundled up into one instant, one presence, and I could do with it whatever I wanted. Just me and the moment.

I felt like throwing up. I rocked on my knees and just... didn't know anything.

The thing that made my mind come back was a strong gust and a light over my skin, a soft pureness. I could see my hands, the contrast, the grit in my fingernails, the little hairs on the backs, a bleeding hangnail--I could _see_. And I looked at the words I had written, and the lettering was so big and clumsy. In the dark I'd had to make it large so I could see it more easily. But now everything was sharper, clearer, so perfect.

It was light. For a second I was afraid it was more tricks, more lies in my head. I cast out all reason then and decided that, if it _was_ another waking dream, then it was a good one, and however fleeting it would prove to be, I would humor and enjoy it.

So I looked up, and saw _Her_.

And _oh_, my joy, my life, my _heart_.

It was the Moon, the Silver Moon. _My_ Silver Moon.

I could have died for joy.

I'm not so sure I didn't and I almost wish I did.

No, I think I'm still here. Yes.

She was there. She was real.

-

I have never known such... sweet comfort.

-

I'm trying to think what happened. I don't remember writing the last lines of my last entry. I find it... strange, and cryptic.

Maybe I did faint.

I remember hurting... And being cold. But not minding.

Because I was happy.

-

The next thing I knew, I was lying on my back, wrapped up nice and warm, and Greys was sitting next to me with my blanket around his shoulders, looking at the stars. My journal was between us.

I wanted to make sure he was real, so I said, "Are you a ghost?" But he didn't answer me.

So I said one more time, "Mr. Greys?"

And he said, "I'm trying not to be. But if you disappear again, I can't make any promises."

Hearing his voice allayed my fears. But it stung me. As it should have--I'd been so foolish and I don't know why. I said the only thing I could think to say, "I'm sorry." It sounded small and useless, and I felt like I wanted to say more, but I wasn't sure if that would only make it sound worse.

He was quiet for about ten minutes. And then he said, "I'm sorry."

It felt safer to say more then. I started, "I didn't think--"

But he just said, "Try to get some rest. You're running a little fever."

And after that he didn't say anything.

I felt my forehead, but... ah, I can never tell.

-

Why didn't I think? Why didn't I wake him? I don't know. It honestly did not seem important at the time. Maybe I really am going crazy and just don't know it. But I won't dwell on that here and now.

At any rate I fell asleep happy, and I am still happy now, for She is with me, my Silver Moon.

She's so beautiful.

She stands above me, right now, amid a spray of diamond stars, frosted, dusted in a halo of mist. Mist no longer lurking to blind, to ensnare and destroy. But to catch the light, to shine it out the brighter for all to see. It's a lovely glow.

My pen-hand itches all the more. The _Moon_ is here. And it makes me so... _enthralled_ that I cannot_ stand _it! It's the same boiling and swelling inside me. But made up of joy, not of despair. Joy so _exquisite_... For I can see the Sky... Part of it glows far behind us, like a god in embryo.

Would I could save this happiness in a bottle, to drink from it whenever I have the need. I want everything. I want to remember it forever. Because it's mine. I found it here.

That... _That_ is why I record. What am I thinking? This book _is_ my bottle.

Then, I fill it; the glow is growing. I pray it's the sun.

The glow in the sky before the sun comes up? It's just so... there's just something so... so mysterious about it. So beautiful. A beauty I'd never seen until I didn't have it anymore. Now I can see little twinges of pink in some very soft clouds. It's like they're barely there.

It just gets brighter and brighter. A moment ago the sky was still black, and there was only a bit of orange just on the horizon. Now the whole canvas is a dark lavender, skirted by living fire...

I swear, those clouds would be invisible but for the sunrise. They're more like sprays of mist, really. Now they make great sweeping ripples of rose against misty-blue. And still the orange burns brighter, flame on the horizon.

Now the sky is purple. The light begins to shine on the dirt, the Rock, warming up... A warm twilight and I can see the ground in the ruddy glow.

I sit here transfixed. It is all I can do. Watching the very stone coming to life in the half-light. I can see light and shadow against each other, I can see _colors_. Like it's real for the first time. Not just the shadow we walk on and climb on and sleep on.

Above, the blue nearest the orange becomes stronger, almost green, light and pastel, the pink drifts still washing over the misty-blue sky, all over like a ragged, beautiful curtain.

Everything is pink. The light sky, the dark ground, the air cold and the shadows warm in their hues. Freezing and burning.

That _green_... I have never noticed the green in the sunrise before. Just between the orange and the blue. No, the _yellow_ and the blue, it's more yellow now.

The curtains coiling across the sky turn to frosty orange and whites waiting to be born. The only pink left now is in the stone, in the dirt, and somehow in a lingering aura just above the ground. Just a little. But it's fading fast. So fleeting.

Things are more yellow and gray now. Yellow above, gray below. Gray and a little green. The rose is almost completely vanished. The green is only a ghost of what it used to be in the sky near the orange. The pink is all but gone. Orange fades to gray that will live to be white before it dies in color again with the sunset.

This _light_. It's... sort of painful to look at for very long. My head is mostly under the blanket.

Lighter and lighter. Only whites with the memory of fire and color. More orange near the horizon, but only just barely so. Everything has been nearly forgotten into the white. And the blue. The blue is still there. Light, pale blue.

The ground has forgotten its color too. Only gray-beige-brown. But so much lighter than anything below, anything behind us. Will it grow lighter and lighter still? Will the sun touch it? Bring out its real, physical color?

These twilight moments are so strange, the colors shift and change too quickly. The all-consuming, hovering reds and pinks, the veils of warmth--they were here a moment ago, but now they've passed away.

A light yellow still glows... the sun... will I see the sun? Will it become too strong to look at? How soon? Would I feel the difference if I watched it? Yes, it's only the sun's light, not the sun itself. It must be. If the sun comes up through the lower clouds it will definitely become too bright.

Skies above, I look up and I see it, the light, light from the sun shining on a higher point of Rock, gracing the brown with red and fire. The sun is reaching it, _touching_ it! It can't be four fathoms higher than where we are. It's so close!

It wasn't there a moment ago. Odd how fast and how slow it moves.

It burns my eyes, but I _want_ it!

_Oh the Sun_...

Yellow-blue-white in the sky, fire on the world, on those parts touched by the sun, and a fading twilight. The sunlight crawls down the tumbles of stone to the lower grounds, towards us. Fire on the Rock. _Oh come closer_...

It makes a mist of yellow over the world, the fire shining off the face of the stone.

Ice in the sky, fire in the light.

-

And I hear more Thunder. Distant. It's so... strange. It's the same sound. I've heard it so much. But it sounds...

It sounds different. As if I'd heard it through different ears all along, and now I hear it clearly for the first time. Feels like... Like it's not here to condemn me, to speak my doom.

It never was.

-

The Sun burns off the tops of the clouds and I can see, oh my heart, I can _see_. Skies and airs, and these peaks, these strange... things of Rock. They're so big.

-

The Thunder. Feels more like it's... _something_... like it was... approvingly, _praisingly_. A final commending from the gods as I breathe the higher air and am touched by the Sun, the _Sun!_ Here upon my pinnacle. As if to proclaim that the darkness never touch me again.

Oh it makes my eyes hurt. I have to hide under the blanket. Greys too, under mine.

I saw his face and it was shining. Maybe it was tears. Maybe it was sweat. Maybe it was just the light, overwhelming my eyes. It burns and stings...

Oh this light, _this light_...

I said I would not despair.

I would not despair, I would not despair. I cannot despair. I can never despair. Not here, not again.

Because writing it down gives it power.

And I feel... such liberation. Like I've torn free of a thousand ugly fates. And I'm above the clouds. I'm where I belong. The bottom of the sky, but the top of the world. Only the friendly hand of time can touch me now.

As it touches all. All in good time.

-

It makes me shudder to write it, but the log-lust demands, and clearly in my head now the thought hovers that it is safe to die.

-

...Dying isn't safe.

Odd.

-

But contradicting embers wake up in me. Things that have been asleep. Things I felt back in our ship.

Like a breath and a strength.

Can we... I'm hesitant. No I can't be afraid: Can we get out? Can we get away?

-

-

A plague upon my mantra. Elena, _I want to see you_.


	31. Chapter 31

Man these just get harder and harder. Thanks for reading, guys. I sure appreciate it. And thank you for reviewing, Reviewers. You rock.  
Chapter Thirty-One...

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Day Three.

My gums are bleeding.

_Day Three_ because it is indeed day-time. The first light I saw--the one that vanished before my eyes--that was the sunlight, the setting sun. And then there was yesterday with the sunrise I recorded, and then today. The third day. It feels good to write that. _Day Three_.

The measurement is comforting. I know we are as lost as Daccat's horde, but now we have the _sun_. And a Moon, and the stars, and their light. And I count us as lucky for having them. It makes me feel... not quite so lost. Now when I hold up Shanda's ring, it sparkles and gleams as it used to. Like the first time Haley showed it to me.

It makes me happy to see it shine again.

We spent most of yesterday resting under the blankets. The light was just too strong; we couldn't stand it after so long in the dark. It's easier today, looking around. And the view we have is... stunning, if nothing else. But I am stunned enough with being able to see at all. To have a proper horizon, a hundred leagues from end to end. No more fog.

We moved to a higher spot on this ridge today. I don't think--

I don't think we'll move again.

-

I'm not afraid anymore.

We're here. As high as we can be. No moss, no fish. Just us, and that's all. Nothing left to do, and that's fine. We're both tired and terribly parched, and a day without climbing is most welcome. It's very cold, and the winds make a howling and a moaning, but I do enjoy the rest.

As for where we are... I just can't say. We've reached the top of our mountain. And that's all it turns out to be. A mountain. Odd enough, a mountain from Deep Sky. But it also has a gigantic depression in the middle. It's very deep and almost a mile across. I've never seen anything like it, and it doesn't line up with any geology I've ever read about. It looks like some kind of crater. Like something left by a giant moonstone impact. Almost.

But I don't think that's what did it. We're on the southern brim of this one, and to the south and west of us there are six more of these mountains. The nearest one looks about four or five miles away. There is one far beyond that one, just to the left, that looks to be the farthest. A few leagues maybe, I don't know.

But they are all roughly flattish on top, like this one. I can only assume they each have the same depression on top. The scene they present is... bizarre. Stunning. Mountains coming up through the cloud sea like giant ant-hills. It's almost... _spooky_. It makes me feel very small. It's a big world. Wonders that render all aforecollected knowledge useless.

I'm in a strange place.

Greys and I looked at the stars and Moon last night. There were thin layers of whispy cloud above us that made it difficult, but judging by what we were able to observe, we think we're still near the Valuan Rift, far to the west of Isla de Faro. Same as when the pirates attacked us.

He went on speculating about the rift, and the trade winds, and the traffic this area might have. It bothered me, I don't know why.

Greys... I can't begrudge his intolerable... mechanical... _practicalities_. He is human too. He's... Moons, I have no right to think ill of him in the least.

I felt like death when he said--it was when he woke up, and I was gone? He thought I'd fallen down the slope, either accidentally or... otherwise. I don't know what I was thinking when I left. Maybe I'll never know. But I'm all right now, we're both all right. Maybe I was mad for a time, but Greys has kept me here, kept my head clear.

He's kept me _alive_. He has saved me.

-

It makes me shudder at my own frailty. My own _weakness_.

-

Part of me hopes it's just the chill of the wind. I do feel a little shivery. And very tired. But I'm all right. But Greys doesn't want me doing anything at all. He wants me to rest.

I daresay writing is restful enough.

But... I _am_ tired. Nothing more to write about for now anyway.

Dearest family, know I love you, as ever and always.

_Alexandro_


	32. Chapter 32

Boy is Pirates III distracting or _what?_ Dang. Arrr, matey, I tell you what... anyway. If it weren't for DesertLynx keepin' me on track here I'd probably _never_ get this done, so, kudos to her. Sorry I took so long! Here's chapter thirty-two. Readers and Reviewers you rock my _socks_ off!  
On with it then...

Oh, and it's still the case that if you can guess where they are you get bonus points.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

Day Four.

It's colder today. The wind picked up. It's moaning around the rocks.

The sound gave me nightmares I think. My dreams were only of Shanda, crying and crying and crying. Just _weeping_. Forever. I could see her shuddering with sobs until I thought my heart would break. Then when I woke up, the sound was still there. But as my head cleared, I realized it was only the wind.

It was strange... it sounded so like her voice. It still does, in a way... maybe.

We saw something curious today. When the sun was still low this morning, the wind was fierce. It drove all the clouds away, the sky cleared completely and we could see for scores of leagues all around.

In the west, very, _very_ far away, a little hazy, we saw what must have been the Green Moon. This green orb, just floating there over the horizon. The clouds have since covered it again, but it was a beautiful thing to look at.

But it makes me wonder if we might be farther out than we think.

And then that gives me bad thoughts that no one will find us. But it is also such a wonderment. The Green Moon. I'd never seen another Moon, just the Silver. My Silver Moon.

In a history book I have back home, it says there used to be a land called Ixa'taka under the Green Moon, but that it was completely destroyed in the Rains of Destruction.

It just makes me think of us here, our situation. Who ever heard of surviving a sinking ship? When your ship goes down, that's it. That's the end.

And yet, here we are. Alive.

And again, who could ever survive the Rains of Destruction?

It just makes me wonder and hope: maybe some people lived. Maybe they've flourished, maybe they've rebuilt their cities of gold and gems, maybe somewhere, they still sail the skies...

Maybe they'll find us.

And I get visions of being rescued by their flying knights, the Roc Riders, like in the old legends...

If you ever come across a copy of that book--it's called _Del Mundo Viejo_--you should read it. It's fascinating. So much knowledge.

-

Aside from the Green Moon, we haven't seen much today. No fish. No ships. Just another arc of the sun over our heads.

I'm grateful for that at least.

-

The wind is crying.

I'm tired and my head hurts, so I'm going to stop.

I love you dear family.

_Alexandro_


	33. Chapter 33

Holy revisions, Batman. Just filled in a large plot-hole a few chapters back. But... nobody seemed to spot it, so I don't feel _quite_ as stupid as I probably should... meh.

And this round's bonus points go to Relik for _pegging_ the location of our stranded characters here. They are indeed at the Bottomless Pit. I chose that locale because if they'd landed anywhere _else_ in Deep Sky... I doubt the altitude would have been survivable. So kudos to Relik!

And hey more cool news! _Haley's Book_ just passed the 1500-hit mark! Thanks guys! °throws confetti°

And as always, many thanks to my Readers and Reviewers! You rock.

Chapter Thirty-Three...

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Day Five.

No ships.

I think we're done. I think we're dead.

Done all we can, but we're just so tired. Mouth hurts, gums still bleeding.

No food, no water, nothing. Don't know days since last blood-drink.

We're too far west.

-

Feels like no more chances to say anything.

-

Greys still had the marking-stone. I asked it, he gave, and I scratched this on the large face of stone near where we lie waiting:

Here Lie Seven Souls  
of the sardis-fishing vessel  
_Zephyrus _  
sunk by black pirates  
83 Post Rains

_Captain Francisco Peralta_  
beloved leader and master fisherman  
and  
_Derek Haley_  
faithful friend and eloquent artisan

who were taken by cannon-fire

_Dhalan_ and _Shanda_  
of _Naja_  
strong of hand and fair of voice  
skilled musicians of Nasr  
and  
_Timothy Porter_  
talented cook and kind confidant

who were taken by the darkness below

_Samuel Greys_  
steadfast first mate  
unwavering in the shadow

who brought us this far

and  
_Alexandro de los Reyes_  
scholar and log-keeper

who made this marker

I want Porter to be remembered as he used to be.

I didn't know what to put for myself. Greys suggested "scholar and log-keeper". He knows I don't think of myself as a real scholar. A would-be scholar maybe, Moons know I want to be one. But he said, "You're scholar enough in my eyes, Mr. Reyes."

When I scratched the last part it made me... sad. Made me wish I still had tears to cry. But I could only go back and lie down by Greys. I put my head down and he set a hand on my shoulder.

The gesture made me feel like everything was all right. No more miraculous survival, no escape this time. But it's all right. We did what we could. Nothing left to do. We made it to the top, and that is our victory.

And so it is. And here we are.

------------

Mr. Reyes has asked me if I have anything I want to say. I believe he is right in that there may be no more opportunities after this.

Having observed my hesitance, he has deduced my thoughts and has just instructed me that if I cannot think of what to write, then I should write that I cannot think of what to write.

I do have something that I would say. I suppose I am just having trouble saying it. I have never composed a will of my own. But I can think of one wish. If I should die and yet be found, it is my desire that my remains be taken to Valua. There is an island off the coast of the Pasaje del Oeste, near the Lesser Rift. On the island is a lighthouse, and a town called Torreón. There is a cemetery there, with a wide stone at the east end. One half of the stone reads _Mayra Torres Greys_. The other half is for myself.

My apologies, Mr. Reyes, but the rest is not for this book.

I am sorry fate brought us here, and that I could not do more to protect our crew. But you are right, we _have_ done all we can. And having that in my mind is enough to ease my regrets. Thank you Mr. Reyes. You have been a fine hireling, and it has been a privilege to know you.

Moons light your way.

_Samuel Greys_

------------

I will not press him for it.

-

Chalking and scratching on stone has wearied me. I am going to sleep now. Very tired. This book shall go in my rucksack, and I will shelter with it in my blanket.

If I do not wake up again, then farewell.

If my remains are found, please take my things to my family on Naranja.

-

And there is nothing else to write.

-

I love you, dear family.

_Alexandro Estevan de los Reyes_


	34. Chapter 34

euGh. Remind me never to start work on a new multi-chapter piece if I'm already working on one. Oh wait, I already did. _Gehh_... Slows me down, sorry guys.  
You're beautiful, Reviewers! Now enough madness. Moving on with chapter thirty-four.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

I, Alex Reyes, speak. Mr. Greys transcribes. My arms have no strength.

Fifth Night.

We're not dead.

I did not think to write again, and sleep wants me, as I want it. But the journal consumes, it _must_ be recorded, now.

My last entry was completed before the sun had peaked. Though the day was strong, it was still very cold. There was a terrible wind from the west. It brought cruel clouds that blocked out the light and would not share their rain. So we lay covered in our blankets, and I held my wrapped-up book as an ensepulchered soldier holds his sword.

I didn't know. It seemed... a thing to be done. The doomed may still have dignity.

And so we lay there. We tried to sleep, but the wind blew right through us and we froze. All we could do was wait. Just shiver and doze, and wait for death. Or a ship. But we saw no ships. I thought again of things to write. But I was just too tired to unbind my book. And I was sufficiently satisfied with what had already been recorded. I was content with my fate.

Mr. Greys has just reminded me of something I'd forgotten. I don't remember it very clearly; feels like a dream. At some point I said to him, "You can eat me if I die first."

Maybe I was dreaming. I only remember the wind. Weeping.

It's a strange place, when there's nothing to live for but dying. Just waiting and wondering when, and what it feels like.

This is too morbid.

But I'm glad Mr. Greys is here to interject the memories I've failed to keep. He's helping me write this in more ways than one.

-

We waited a long time.

And then Mr. Greys cried out.

I thought he was dying. I opened my eyes, and the sky was darker than I had left it. The sun was setting.

He wasn't dying, he was yelling at me to wake up. He pointed to a thing in the southern sky. It was a ship, flying low. After that point it was like another life, another strength, and I was reeling and threatening to fall over before I realized I had gotten up.

The ship was flying north, and it would pass by us on the west. We waved our arms and yelled and screamed and our voices did not sound like our own; they didn't want to work, and shouting made the parch more painful.

Mine still does not sound like my own as I speak. It's thrashed.

Our voices and arms were too small. So we took my blanket and flapped it back and forth, again and again. It left me winded after only a few flaps. Mr. Greys too. We were so tired. But they didn't change course. Maybe if the blanket hadn't been so mud-caked they would have been able to see the color.

They stayed on their heading. When they were close enough for us to hear their engine chugging, and they kept flying straight, I wanted to cry. I didn't even know if I wanted to live anymore. It was all Yes's and No's in my head all over again.

Then Mr. Greys put his hands on my shoulders, and I opened my eyes and found that I was on my knees. I didn't even remember falling down; I still don't. But the gesture was enough; I _did_ want to live. I really did.

But I looked at Mr. Greys, and he had a mad look in his eye. He said, "We need a fire. The blankets."

I couldn't think. I said, "We could die without the blankets."

But he said, "We will _definitely_ die without that ship."

So it was to be a fire.

But we had nothing to make a fire with. We used to get our fires going by using the lantern. Mr. Greys could open it up and make a short, and get it to spark.

But the lantern was gone.

------------

This is Samuel Greys. Mr. Reyes has asked me to write for a time. A heavy heart has rendered him uneager to dictate further. I do not blame him; he has lost Shanda's ring. He does not wish to speak of it.

We knew we would not be able to start a fire, at least not by any means we had used before. So, Mr. Reyes undid the cord from around his neck and offered the ring. I had forgotten about it. Thank the Moons he had not. He made it plain to me that the gem was a Nasrean red moonstone, conductive to pyr-energy, however small an amount.

Neither of us knows how to use magic. But we were able to release a small amount of energy by destroying the stone. We used the cutlass to fray one edge of the quilting, and positioned the scraps as kindling around a flat rock. We set the ring in the middle and used another flat rock to crush it. The flames came out between the rocks in a red disc, and ignited the fabric.

We kept the fire high by feeding it both blankets, and our coats, and we continued to wave until the ship came level with us to the west. But it still did not change course.

I will not pollute this book with recitations of my expletives.

Suffice it to say I became very violently angry. As no other ideas came to me, I used the four remaining shots of my pistol against the ship. The distance was impossible, but one of the balls must have connected, for the ship turned toward our smoke a moment later.

I asked Mr. Reyes for the cutlass, but he had fallen into another swoon. I took it from his things and was favored with a last shaft of daylight. I used the blade to reflect the light back at the ship. It makes me grateful that Mr. Reyes has kept the metal so clean.

The ship came toward our beacon until it was almost directly above us. We saw it was Valuan in design, steel-hulled. The engine strained to lessen the altitude, but the ship was still several fathoms out of reach.

After a moment, two men leaned over the deck rail, and one of them waved and said something in Old Valuan. I yelled back at him to lower something. Either he understood me or it had been his intent from the beginning, for he then dropped a line over the side.

When I had enough length to work with, I secured Mr. Reyes first. He regained enough sense to hold on, and then demanded his journal with a vigor I had not seen in him for days. I put the book in his rucksack and strapped it to him, and then shouted back to the men on board and they hoisted him up.

Shortly thereafter they let the line back down, and I tied it fast around me. I took the cutlass and left the rest, and bade Deep Sky farewell.

When I cleared the railing, the cutlass and my pistol were taken from me. It was understandable enough; I expect we'll get them back later. Mr. Reyes was sprawled on the deck, still holding his journal tight against him. One of the crewmen helped him with a canteen. The same man offered me a drink as well, and I accepted it gratefully.

Then a man whom we have since learned to be the captain of this ship stepped forward, and put forth what I could tell was a question. I didn't understand it, but Mr. Reyes did, and, still closed-eyed on his back, he answered likewise in Old Valuan. The exchange went on for a moment until the captain paused. He looked us both up and down, distributed some orders, and a short time later Mr. Reyes and I found ourselves in the mess, with hot bowls of hamachou broth, a variety of fruit and a pile of biscuits at our disposal.

I don't think either of us had ever been so happy to lay eyes on a meal.

------------

Alex Reyes again. Mr. Greys still transcribes. I fell asleep and he took the liberty to keep writing. He's shorter in words than I am. Probably better, elsewise it would never be finished.

He read it to me, and I am happy with what he has put down. But he forgot to say he burned all the hair off his arms when he smashed Shanda's ring.

What the captain said—Captain Alvarez—he asked who we were and if we were "thrown off by the storm too."

I told him we were sardis-fishers, attacked by pirates and stranded in Deep Sky for weeks. Pirates he believed. Sardis-fishers and weeks in Deep Sky I don't think so. He gave us food either way, and some makeshift berths in a storage room.

I'm just glad the language is still in my head. I haven't studied it in a long time.

The fruit was very good. Never tasted its like before. But now I feel so full. A little sick. So much food after nothing. I hope it will go away.

After we ate, the captain came to talk to us again. We found out this is the _west_ side of the Valuan Rift. We must have drifted here under the clouds after we were shot down. There's no way back to the east side, back to Isla de Faro except up and across Valua and back south through Nasr.

It makes me sad. It's such a long way. Too far. Too far for my family.

But I'll be all right. And they'll be all right. I just—we'll be fine.

Captain Alvarez didn't believe we were sardis-fishers because there _are_ no sardis west of the Valuan Rift. We told him how we crashed, and how far we climbed, but I don't think he believes that either. I think he took our mountains to be only very low islands.

Thinking about it, he has not seen the depths, he doesn't know. Perhaps it doesn't matter, what he believes or not. Either way, he has been more than gracious in giving us passage, for the moment. We're going north to the Pasaje del Oeste. His ship—this ship, the _Viento Rico_—needs repairing there. They took damage in a storm.

Mr. Perez, the one who gave us water, he told us what happened. They make their runs from Valua to _Ixa'taka_ of all places. Or a remnant of it. There is some land left then; the Rains didn't destroy it all. There's a small Valuan colony near the north end of a big landmass, and it's there Captain Alvarez gets his fruit stock. _Garpa_, they call it. Sells for a high price up north. We've tasted why.

They had begun their return journey to Valua when they were blown far off-course, way out to the east, by gale-winds and lightning. That's how they ended up near the rift, where they found us. They were only flying as low as they were to ease the stress on their engine. If they'd been in the trafficking altitudes, they would never have seen us.

Call it what you will, to me it's a miracle.

------------

Mr. Reyes would still have me record. But he is weary of dictation, and wants to sleep. I do not understand this urgency he feels to have it all down on paper, _as it happens_. I understand even less the need I feel to oblige.

The sun is rising. In which case, _Sixth Day_

Sr. Perez has brought us some breakfast. He has been very helpful, to myself especially, as he speaks some broken Mid-Oceanic. But he has seemed anxious about something.

A few moments ago he exchanged some words with me. He asked me if there had not been another with us, a mujer—a woman—when they found us on the mountain.

I figured what he must have been referring to, and told him it was the wind. I had to make gestures for him to take my meaning.

He asked me what was down there, in the depths.

I knew enough to answer in his native tongue. "Sólo la muerte." Only death.

I do not think it satisfied him entirely, but he did seem to realize I do not want to think on it anymore.

Mid-day. Mr. Reyes would write with his own hand. I am going to sleep.

------------

I'm all right now Elena.

Love you so much. Forever.


	35. Chapter 35

Thank you, Reviewers.  
Chapter thirty-five.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

------------

This is Samuel Greys.

Seventh day since we saw the sun. The eighty-second day of summer.

Mr. Reyes once told me that if I do not know what to write, then I should write that I do not know what to write.

Then, I do not know what to write. I do not have the thing called _log-lust_.

Last night, Mr. Reyes' fever worsened. He asked me to sit by him. He was shivering, so I draped another layer of bedding over him, and that seemed to do a little better.

He told me never to let him go back to Deep Sky, and I told him I wouldn't.

He asked me if I remembered Shanda's song. I told him I did. Then he asked me to sing it for him. I was embarrassed, but I tried for Mr. Reyes' sake. I'd never tried singing before. I'd never had occasion to. My ear is not trained in music. I don't know how good or bad I sounded. But he seemed to take comfort in it. It seemed to calm him down.

He said he would never forget the tune for as long as he lived, and that I should not forget it either, because there was no other way he knew to record it. He made me promise never to forget. So I promised him.

I hummed the song for him until he fell asleep.

He died in the night.

------------

------------

He told me to finish.

I—don't know what to write.

He said I should just keep writing. Until Elena gets the book, he said. I should record everything that happens.

We still sail northeast. There are perhaps two days until we reach Valua.

I just don't know. He told me it would be all right, that I could put down whatever came to me, but I just don't know. What am I doing?

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I have read over those parts he wrote that I had not yet searched. I am glad he did not continue to hide what happened between him and Mr. Haley. I had been worried from my first reading of his log. But he is stronger than I knew. He was stronger. In many ways.

He is—sorely missed. He was the last of my shipmates. Moons help me, I tried. I tried to help them all.

Now I am alone again.

Only Sr. Perez understands me here. And only a very little. It is difficult. But I have made it known to him, and he to Capitán Alvarez, that the body is to be buried on land. Two days to port or two hundred, Mr. Reyes will not go back to Deep Sky.

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And I do not know what else to write.


	36. Chapter 36

And this week's cookie goes to Hunter-Killer360 for posting the _one-hundredth_ review of Haley's Book. °throws confetti° Many thanks for all the reviews, Reviewers! You all deserve cookies.  
Here's chapter thirty-six.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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Eighty-sixth day of summer, 83 Post Rains.

We traversed the Pasaje two days ago. There are more settlements along its bottom than I remember. When we came to the middle plains we entered a small valley to the south. There is a city here called Platita.

Capitán Alvarez returned my pistol and the cutlass to me. He and most of his crew have gone to a local shipyard to see about the damage on the _Viento Rico_. But Sr. Perez was... _kind enough_ to aid me in finding arrangements for Mr. Reyes, as well as seeing to some of my own needs.

The people here bury their dead in a low-lying side-valley, at a place called Colina Amarilla. Mr. Reyes was laid there to rest today. I was able to procure a simple stone. It reads as follows:

Alexandro Estevan de los Reyes   
de Isla Naranja   
66 D.L. - 83 D.L.

I believe that was the year he was born. I knew his age, but not his birth-date. Of his relations I beg pardon if my guess is wrong.

The Yellow Moon watches over him now.

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I have acquired passage to Nasr, on the trade-freighter _Jal Qessán_. It will leave in four days. The Nasreans speak more Mid-Oceanic than the Valuans, so it may be easier from here. I am attempting to make all haste, but until I come back to my own on Isla de Faro, I have only my skills to barter with, at present.

In the meantime, there is no more I can write of Alexandro Reyes that I have not written before. As instructed, I leave this journal, among other things, to his sister, Elena.

And my part in this book is finished.

_Samuel Greys  
de Isla de Faro_


	37. Chapter 37

_"It's a song about ashes..."_

Well my dear friends, this is it. This will be the final installment of my first fan-fiction, Haley's Book. I know it's been downright freakin' depressing at times—hey, tragedy—and a lot of stuff has been less than accurate to the game, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not... but I'm sure glad you guys looked past all that and came along for the story anyway. It's been one heckuva ride.  
Reviewers, as always, you're the best. You have my thanks forever.  
Chapter thirty-seven.

**Disclaimer:** I own nothing.

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FORWARD / REEXPEDIR:  
Samuel Greys  
7, Rayo Sur de Rueda  
Torreón, Island/Isla Salida del Sol  
off the west coast of the Plains Province / cercano a la costa occidental de la Provincia de las Llanuras  
Valua / Valua

-

Samuel Greys  
Angler's Haunt stock-shop  
Northport, Isla de Faro  
Central Mid-Ocean / Océano-Centro Central

-

2nd day of spring, 84 P.R.

Samuel my friend,

I hope this letter finds you well. Were you able to get a good trade on the moonstones? If you ever find yourself short, remember you're more than welcome to our little quarry here.

Elena and I are both doing fine. We've made some great improvements on the house. The new wing is finally done, and it came in handy. Salvador and Seth came down late this winter with some of Alex's things and most of his books. We seem to have acquired quite the library.

I recall you being concerned about Elena before you left. She's doing much better now. Please forgive her parting words from before. It was hard, for both of us, hearing the news you brought of Alex. But we are grateful you came. It's not every mourning family that can reclaim heirlooms lost to Deep Sky. For that we can't thank you enough.

But as grateful as I am, I still can't deny that seeing Elena's heart so broken couldn't help but _shatter_ my own. First the lives of her parents, and then that of her brother—claimed by pirates. It's more than anyone should bear, and I don't ever want to see her looking so sad again.

Consequently, I have a proposition for you.

I don't know if Alex ever told you what an inflammable ex-navy hooligan his sister has married. I know I'm impulsive, liable to fly into passions at the drop of a hat. But it's a temperament to my liking. How else can the world move but by the will of those living in it?

At any rate, I'm sure you've been aware of the increasing number of reported pirate attacks since the rise of Daccat. They've become especially hostile on the trade-routes outside of Valua.

But the Gulf Province Navy doesn't care a whit. I know there are good, right-minded men in their ranks, but Valua won't help to stem the tide of piracy so long as its own people lack the need for protection. Well good for them, but the rest of the world doesn't _have_ the luxury of impassable borders! While they hole up behind the walls of their cove, everyone else's trade-ships are left to their own devices whenever black sails come bearing down out of the clouds.

It just boils my blood that the only nation to retain some vestige of a navy after the Rains doesn't do a bloody thing about it! They have the means, why not use them? I had joined up hoping to do some good—there's always rebuilding to do, and I had mad dreams of helping to reunify the Six Dominions... I was only a callow sixteen-year-old plebe at the time. But for the love of starlight we're _three_ generations past _apocalypse_—one would think old grudges would have died out by now. Aside from seeking our own petty profits through the trade-lines, can we not _help_ each other just a _little bit more?_

I'm sorry for my outburst—like I said, _inflammable_. I suppose I've always been too idealistic for my own good.

As for my proposition, I trust you remember my ship, the _Rogue_. I've had her outfitted with a few new toys, and I'm looking to bring in some fresh crewmen for a new enterprise of mine.

In order for us to continue living as freely as we do, Daccat's followers must be dealt with. And as the Gulf Province has elected to remain uninvolved, it seems that the task has been left to the common man. If by any chance you are questioning my mad audacity, then to put it bluntly, yes, I am intending to hunt down and disable the pirating vessels that threaten our livelihood. Call me crazy, that's fine—Elena is kind enough to use the term as a second name for me anyway. But I feel confident with the skills and experience that came with spending a decade in the military. A few close friends of mine have also agreed to join me in this venture. Some have more reason than others, but they all are likewise willing and more than able.

As for compensation, if the theft reports from the trade-lines are any indication, the average buccaneer vessel should hold plenty of gold to go around. But the greater share should go back towards aiding those who lost it in the first place. If we kept it _all_ for ourselves we'd be no better than the pirates. And if the endeavor should prove to be unprofitable, my resources will keep us going; Fairlode's moonstone cache doesn't look to be running dry anytime soon. It's my land, and I'll use it as I see fit.

That is my proposal. To engage in piracy upon pirates. Unconventional, maybe. Ludicrously over-zealous, most definitely. But in light of the fact that no one else is doing anything about it, I _cannot remain idle_. Not after seeing Elena's face after you gave us the news. Not after wondering how many more heartbroken Elenas Daccat has left in his wake already. The immediate chaos that followed the Rains ended eighty-four years ago. It's time for someone to tell them the looting is over.

After reading Alex's last journal, I have no qualms about extending the invitation to you as well. I could use a mate on my ship like the one described in that book. If that man is still around, I'd be honored to have him sail at my side.

I'll leave the rest to you, my friend. Whatever your choice, I look forward to hearing from you again.

Sincerely your servant,

_Diego Dyne_  
Fairlode Island  
Vortex Drifts, Southern End  
Southern Mid-Ocean / Océano-Centro Meridional

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Mr. Diego Dyne  
Island/Isla Fairlode  
southern end of Vortex Drifts / margen meridional de los Despojos del Vórtice  
Southern Mid-Ocean / Océano-Centro Meridional

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Twenty-third day of spring, 84 Post Rains.

Warmest greetings, Mr. Dyne,

Well met indeed. I was glad to receive your letter. I am in Valua at present, and my ties and friendships in this place have worn thin in the long time I was away. Reading from you was a shaft in the clouds.

That is good, then, about Elena. I know how painful it is to lose a loved one, but it gladdens me to hear that her spirits have improved. I am certain having her brother's old books does its own part to ease her mind as well. I am curious as to just how big his collections was—it sounds as if you've taken on an entire roomful. Scholar indeed.

And that reminds me—I am going to be sending your letter back with this one. I would request that you keep both of them in the back of the book marked "Derek Haley". I know Mr. Reyes kept letters as well as journals, and I believe he would have liked to have these two as well.

Regarding your proposal, it sounds ambitious to say the least. I do not think you ludicrous, nor do I think you a hooligan. It seems a good-hearted thing you seek. And I do remember your ship. The blue-canvas sails struck me as somewhat eccentric, but she seemed quite hardy and capable. You will have to let me know what modifications you made. You speak of them so lightly it makes me wonder just how deep that cache of yours runs. If you are not careful, your entire island may just be hollowed out with your expenses.

Speaking of which, I must express my thanks for the generosity you showed me before. To be honest, I am very grateful that you refused my refusal to take the moonstones. The gold they turned over has aided me a great deal and brought me quite far. But I have yet a little farther to go before I return to Mid-Ocean. I have some unfinished business with a certain Angelo Perez. I will have more news of that for you later, I am sure, among other things.

In the meantime I will give thought to your proposal. I must admit, your delivery of the idea is very stirring. I believe every man dreams just as deeply for something better in this world. Just do not let your passions run away with you before we meet again. I will return in due season, and I intend to visit Fairlode once more. When I do, I would like to speak with you further about this venture.

Until that time I wish you well. Moons light your way.

_Samuel Greys_  
7, Rayo Sur de Rueda  
Torreón, Isla Salida del Sol  
de la costa occidental de la Provincia de las Llanuras  
Valua

Post Script—I have found a man here who can transcribe musical script. He has notated the song Shanda sang as mentioned in Mr. Reyes' book. I will bring it when I come. Perhaps in time one of you may learn to decipher it.

_Samuel Greys_

THE END

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Hoo! Wow, done in just under a year. Many thanks to all you Readers for coming along with me through my first fan-fiction!

And an extra special thanks to Reviewers _MartiOwlsten_, _Relik_, _Desert Lynx_, _The Real Jack of Hearts_, _Eyes of the infinite galaxy_, _Eteryu_, _Hunter-Killer360_, _DanikaLareyna_, _hereforkicks_, and _Paosheep_ for all the wonderful feedback and encouragement!

And finally, a few super-duper-ultra-mega-über-thank-you's to

_MartiOwlsten_, for introducing me to fanfiction-dot-net, for going out and eating sushi with me so I could get a handle of the taste of raw fish, and for making sure I never fall asleep in my cubicle. Thanks a million! Now, all I have to do is introduce you to this wonderful little game I know of called "Skies of Arcadia" and you'll be all set...

_Desert Lynx_, for always keeping me going and cheering me on whenever I fell into a rut, and for always making sure I'm still alive with all the fun emails. Thanks so much!

_Relik_, for keeping my imagination alive and inspiring me with her beautiful story, _Trade Winds_. Thank you for reminding me of what a wonderful world Arcadia can be to write!

_And finally to my Dad_, on the off-chance he ever reads this, for being my back-up English-Spanish Dictionary, and for taking me hiking on Saturday, December 23, 2006, the one day in twenty blue moons when fog covered the entire Phoenix Valley, and we came up on top of South Mountain, as the sun rose above a surrounding sea of clouds.

Many thanks to you all, and many happy readings and writings.

_Contraltissimo_


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